Friday, September 02, 2016

When it comes to Hillary, Paul Waldman notes, a special standard applies as to what "raises questions"

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You can find the piece to which Paul's directing us here.


"If you as a journalist are going to say that something 'raises questions,' and if you know the answer to those questions, you have to say that, too. So in this case, the question the Band email raises is, 'Did an aide to Bill Clinton get a diplomatic passport from Hillary Clinton's staff when she was Secretary of State, something he was not entitled to?' The answer is — and pay attention to make sure you grasp this answer in all its complexity — No."

by Ken

One of the ways in which the Right-Wing Noise Machine has learned to tie the Infotainment Noozemedia in knots is by exploiting the media crutch of "even-handedness" -- based, of course, on utterly false equivalences. And the Noise Machine has been crucifying Hillary Clinton with a steady stream of "news" items and leaks that feed to the Center and Left's appallingly lazy acceptance of the Noise Machine's "larger narrative" that Hillary is, as Paul Waldman puts it in the post of his we're looking at today, "Here’s a tale of two scandals. Guess which one will get more play?" "tainted by scandal, or corrupt, or just sinister in ways people can never quite put their finger on."

By itself this would be damaging enough to any kind of realistic political discourse regarding the election or anything else. However, the problem is wildly compounded by the exact opposite way of looking at things that should raise questions on the Right; the standard has been stretched so preposterously that every day zillions of things that genuinely ought to raise questions don't seem to. Like, for example, the growing smell of the wildly inappropriate connection between the Trump interests and Florida AG Pam Biondi. What it comes down to, Paul notes at the end, is: "Some stories 'raise questions,' and others don't."

As Digby also noted today, Paul has "done such a thorough job" with the story that she was able to forego writing it up herself. I think we'll also just let him tell the story his way.
Here’s a tale of two scandals. Guess which one will get more play?

By Paul Waldman
September 2 at 1:01 PM

Whenever some new piece of information emerges about Hillary Clinton or people close to her, we’re told that it “raises questions” of some kind, which means it’s being shoehorned into a larger narrative that says something fundamental about her: That she’s tainted by scandal, or corrupt, or just sinister in ways people can never quite put their finger on.

Yet somehow, stories about Donald Trump that don’t have to do with the latest appalling thing that came out of his mouth don’t “raise questions” in the same way. They’re here and then they’re gone, obliterated by his own behavior without going deep into question-raising territory.

To see what I mean, let’s look at a couple of stories that have come out in the last 24 hours. We’ll start with the one about Clinton. You may have heard recently about Judicial Watch, which is an organization established in the 1990s to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, a mission it continues to this day. Through lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests, they try to obtain information that can be used against the Clintons, and they’re going to be a vital player in Washington politics should Hillary become president. The group’s latest “revelation” can be found in email exchanges between Doug Band, an executive at the Clinton Foundation, and Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, when Clinton was secretary of state.

Here’s how the New York Times reported this story, under the headline “Emails Raise New Questions About Clinton Foundation Ties to State Department“:
A top aide to Hillary Clinton at the State Department agreed to try to obtain a special diplomatic passport for an adviser to former President Bill Clinton in 2009, according to emails released Thursday, raising new questions about whether people tied to the Clinton Foundation received special access at the department.

The request by the adviser, Douglas J. Band, who started one arm of the Clintons’ charitable foundation, was unusual, and the State Department never issued the passport. Only department employees and others with diplomatic status are eligible for the special passports, which help envoys facilitate travel, officials said.

Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign said that there was nothing untoward about the request and that it related to an emergency trip that Mr. Clinton took to North Korea in 2009 to negotiate the release of two American journalists. Mrs. Clinton has long denied that donors had any special influence at the State Department.
The first sentence of that story is questionable at best. The top aide, Huma Abedin, did not “agree to try to obtain a special diplomatic passport” for Band. He emailed her asking for it, and she replied, “OK will figure it out.” It’s hard to say whether that constitutes agreeing to anything, and at any rate, Band and the other two Clinton aides who were going to accompany the former president on this mission to North Korea didn’t actually need diplomatic passports for the trip and wouldn’t be allowed to get them anyway, nothing happened. You might have missed it, but there in the second paragraph the story notes that no diplomatic passports were ever issued.

To sum up: An executive at the Clinton Foundation made a request of Hillary Clinton’s aide, and didn’t get what he was asking for. Now maybe there is some real evidence somewhere of corruption at the State Department during Clinton’s time there, but that sure as heck isn’t it.

If you as a journalist are going to say that something “raises questions,” and if you know the answer to those questions, you have to say that, too. So in this case, the question the Band email raises is, “Did an aide to Bill Clinton get a diplomatic passport from Hillary Clinton’s staff when she was Secretary of State, something he was not entitled to?” The answer is — and pay attention to make sure you grasp this answer in all its complexity — No. (If you want a fairer version of this story, here’s the Post’s.)

Now let me point you to another story, one you probably haven’t heard about. Yesterday we learned that Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty over a contribution his foundation made to a PAC affiliated with Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, whom you might remember from the Republican convention, where she gave a rousing speech endorsing Trump. Does this story “raise questions”? Does it ever.

Here’s the quick summary: In 2013, Bondi’s office received multiple complaints from Floridians who said they had been cheated out of thousands of dollars by a fraudulent operation called Trump University. While Bondi’s office was looking into the claims to determine if they should join New York State’s lawsuit against Trump University, Bondi called Donald Trump and asked him for a contribution to her PAC.

Now let’s pause for a moment to savor the idea that Bondi, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the state, would solicit a contribution from someone her office was in the process of investigating. She did solicit that contribution, and Donald Trump came through with $25,000.

Or actually, his foundation paid Bondi’s PAC the $25,000, which is an illegal contribution. Trump’s people say this was just a clerical error, and Trump himself reimbursed the foundation — that’s what the IRS fine was about. But days before getting the check, Bondi’s office announced that they were considering whether to go after Trump University, and not long after the check was cashed, they decided to drop the whole thing.

Here are a few questions this story raises: How many Floridians were scammed by Trump University? When Bondi and Trump spoke, did Trump University come up? What was the basis on which Bondi decided not to join New York’s lawsuit? Why didn’t she recuse herself from the decision? Are there any other attorneys general Trump has given money to, and had any of them received complaints about Trump University, the Trump Institute, the Trump Network, or any of Trump’s other get-rich-quick scams that were so successful in separating ordinary people from their money?

Those kinds of questions are what spur more digging and allow news organizations to not just write one story about an issue like this and then consider it done, but return to it again and again. If they decided to, they could get at least as much material out of the issue of Trump’s scams as they do out of Clinton’s alleged corruption at the State Department. But I’m guessing they won’t. Some stories “raise questions,” and others don’t.
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Sunday, October 18, 2015

Corrupt Corporatists Steve Israel And Debbie Wasserman Schultz Declare Fratricidal War Against Progressives

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Steve Israel, de facto head of the DCCC (and the most outspoken member of their recruitment committee) and with a new title Pelosi invented for him, Chair, Policy and Communications, is making noise again. His war against progressives is multi-faceted and never-ending. Although Pelosi, when giving him his new job, said that he "has consistently proved the depth of his wisdom and the strength of his strategic vision in making our case to the American people," she overlooked the fact that under his catastrophic chairmanship, the DCCC-- largely because of him and only him-- managed to lose a net of 8 seats in a year when Obama won the country and a much smarter DSCC chairman just about swept the field and won tough races in Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Israel's incompetence and/or lame strategy cost the Democrats CA-10 (Denham), CA-21 (Valadao), CA-25 (McKeon), CO-06 (Coffman), FL-10 (Webster), IL-13 (Davis), MI-01 (Benishek), MI-06 (Upton), MI-11 (Bentivolio), MN-02 (Kline), MN-06 (Bachmann), NV-03 (Heck), NJ02 (LoBiondo), NJ-03 (Runyan), NJ-05 (Garrett), NY-11 (Grimm), NY-19 (Gibson), NY-22 (Hanna), NY-23 (Reed), NY-27 (Collins), NC-08 (Hudson), NC-11 (Meadows), NC-13 (Holding), OH-06 (Johnson), OH-16 (Renacci), PA-06 (Gerlach), PA-07 (Meehan), PA-08 (Fitzpatrick), PA-12 (Rothfus), PA-15 (Dent), TN-04 (DesJarlais), VA-02 (Rigell), WI-07 (Duffy) and WI-08 (Ribble). [bolded districts were won by Obama as Israel's depth of wisdom and strength of his strategic vision were leading the Democrats to another defeat.]

In 2014 Israel led the DCCC to an even more disastrous year by following his same lame playbook. He lost a net of 13 seats, primarily conservaDems who he had counseled to vote with the GOP at every opportunity, like Ron Barber (Blue Dog-AZ), Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL), John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Brad Schneider (New Dem-IL), Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY), Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX), Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV). 3 other right-wing Democrats-- Bill Owens (New Dem-NY), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC) and Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)-- knew they would be defeated and retired, their seats all going to Republicans. Israel's only victories were for right-wing Democrats Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL), Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE) and Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA), Aguilar the only one likely to retain his seat in 2016.

So yesterday Chairman Strategic Vision lashed out at progressives again in an interview with Alex Brown for the NationalJournal, denouncing them for fratricide for daring to side with working people against the corporate TPP. Neglecting to mention that on June 12 a preliminary TPP vote narrowly passed the House (219-211, only 28 wretched excuses for Democrats voting in favor, Israel railed against Democratic allies, saying "We have to stop the frat­ri­cide. It’s hard enough to go up against Shel­don Ad­el­son and the Koch broth­ers. Our mem­bers shouldn’t have to go up against Shel­don Ad­el­son, the Koch broth­ers-- and [mem­bers’] friends."
The “friends” Is­rael re­ferred to are the labor and pro­gress­ive groups that have gone after the 28 Demo­crats in the House and 13 in the Sen­ate who voted to pass Trade Pro­mo­tion Authority in June. That meas­ure lim­its Con­gress to an up-or-down vote on the Trans-Pa­cific Part­ner­ship, a 12-na­tion trade deal that will land on Cap­it­ol Hill early next year. TPP has been a key pri­or­ity of the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion, but is op­posed by most Demo­crats.

The AFL-CIO has been among the most vo­cal op­pon­ents of the deal, run­ning ads against Demo­crat­ic sup­port­ers like Rep. Ami Be­ra and hold­ing protests in the dis­tricts of oth­ers. The group also cut off cam­paign fund­ing for Demo­crats during the TPA fight, a move os­tens­ibly aimed at fo­cus­ing re­sources on the trade battle but one that was per­ceived as an im­pli­cit threat to would-be sup­port­ers.

Mean­while, pro­gress­ive groups like Demo­cracy for Amer­ica have tried to line up primary chal­lengers to pro-trade Democrats. “We will not lift a fin­ger or raise a penny to protect you when you’re at­tacked in 2016, we will en­cour­age our pro­gress­ive al­lies to join us in leav­ing you to rot, and we will act­ively search for op­por­tun­it­ies to primary you with a real Demo­crat,” the group’s chair, Jim Dean, said in a statement fol­low­ing the vote.

...“It’s ab­so­lutely ab­surd to ask any­one who cares about in­come in­equal­ity... to ig­nore a very clear be­tray­al like this vote for fast-track au­thor­ity,” said Demo­cracy for Amer­ica’s Neil Sroka. “They’re liv­ing in a fanta­sy­land if they think organ­iz­a­tions like ours are just go­ing to ig­nore these votes.”

Sroka ad­ded that elect­or­al vic­tor­ies are hol­low if they only em­power Demo­crats who vote with the oth­er party. “Democrats would be best served by vot­ing like Demo­crats and ac­tu­ally stand­ing up and fight­ing for work­ing fam­il­ies,” he said. His group will be ur­ging al­lies not to give to the DCCC or any oth­er or­gan­iz­a­tions that may end up fund­ing trade sup­port­ers.

DCCC Chair­man Ben Ray Lu­jan was care­ful not to call out any Demo­crat­ic al­lies, and he said out­side groups are free to use their re­sources as they please. But he did re­mind labor that Demo­crats have been their strongest al­lies on a num­ber of polit­ic­al is­sues. “I’d en­cour­age our friends in labor that, as we look for part­ner­ships down the road and we ad­voc­ate to make sure that people get a fair wage for a hard day’s work... those are is­sues that as Demo­crats we share with labor,” he said.

That sen­ti­ment isn’t new. In June, Minor­ity Whip Steny Hoy­er said he had “urged our friends in labor to have re­spect for the de­cisions of mem­bers.” He lis­ted off is­sues like collect­ive bar­gain­ing and the min­im­um wage where Democrats have worked to boost labor’s goals.

...Ad­ded Sroka: “If Demo­crats fail to re­take the House, they need to ser­i­ously look at [trade] as one of the reas­ons they failed to do it... If Ami Be­ra is de­feated, it’s not be­cause progress­ives didn’t stand up and de­fend Ami Be­ra. It’s because Ami Be­ra took a vote that makes it im­possible for anyone who cares for work­ing fam­il­ies in this coun­try to support him.”

Not­ably, Rep. Debbie Wasser­man Schultz, who heads the Demo­crat­ic Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee and voted for TPA, said she has heard noth­ing about such a back­lash-- an is­sue on which every oth­er mem­ber of the House seems to have an opin­ion. She said she met re­cently with labor lead­ers, in­clud­ing the AFL-CIO, without it com­ing up. “I’ve hon­estly not heard any threat what­so­ever to any Demo­crat re­lated to the trade deal,” she said. “I have a hard time com­ment­ing on something that I haven’t heard.”

Still, many of the oth­er mem­bers in her caucus say the fo­cus should be on win­ning the House-- not a single trade vote. “I have com­mit­ted to mak­ing sure we win back the ma­jor­ity, and that starts with re­turn­ing in­cum­bent Demo­crats in swing dis­tricts—in­clud­ing those that I some­times dis­agree with,” Kildee said. “Ob­vi­ously, I think this is im­port­ant to labor, and I think they should take a strong po­s­i­tion. … But I think we should fo­cus on the long-term battle as well as the short-term battle.”
Wasserman Schultz, a congenital liar, is very much aware that labor is helping recruit a strong Democratic candidate to run against her in a primary next year, presumably Tim Canova, a professor of law and public finance at Nova Southeastern University.

A Sanders supporter, Canova has been critical of Wasserman Schultz's performance as chair of the DNC, including her role in limiting the presidential debates. "It’s bad for Democrats and bad for the country, but she’s apparently decided that it’s good for her own career to hitch her wagon to Hillary Clinton-- but it’s a wagon filled with a lot baggage and broken promises to American workers.

"People are just tired of being sold out by calculating and triangulating politicians. Wasserman Schultz has become the ultimate machine politician. While she stakes out liberal positions on culture war issues, when it comes to economic and social issues, she’s too often with the corporate elites. On too many crucial issues-- from fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership to the war on drugs and medical marijuana and mass incarceration, to her support for budget sequestrations and austerity-- Wasserman Schultz votes down the line with big corporate interests and cartels: Wall Street banks and hedge funds, Big Pharma, the private health insurers, private prisons, Monsanto, it goes on and on. It’s easy to say you’re for doing something about climate change and the environment, for pay equity, raising the minimum wage, or getting money out of politics, but it’s mostly just talk when you’re taking so much corporate money at the same time. That’s why the TPP is so insidious. It will shift the costs of environmental protection, health and safety and labor standards from corporate wrongdoers and wealthy investors to the taxpayers who have been taking it on the chin for so long. In many ways, Wasserman Schultz no longer has a choice. She’s become an establishment machine politician who has to turn her back on taxpayers, working folks, students and the elderly poor, unfortunately it’s all to line the pockets of the same corporate interests that are funding her campaigns. In today’s politics, the worst have no convictions, which may explain all their flip-flops on big issues, from Hillary Clinton on Keystone Pipeline to Wasserman Schultz’s indecision on the agreement with Iran. After playing Hamlet for weeks and blocking a DNC resolution, she finally came around to support the Iran agreement, but only when it became pretty clear she would have lost her post as DNC chair, a message apparently delivered in person by vice president Biden. It must be exhausting to have to constantly answer to wealthy campaign donors and corporate lobbyists when making these decisions."

As of now, there is still no primary challenger for Steve Israel... but we haven't given up looking. As soon as one does decide to run, he or she will be on this page, along with the other progressive House candidates that Blue America is supporting.

UPDATE: Democratic Leaders-- The Worst Leaders Ever

As Marty Yglesias explained to Vox readers Monday morning, the Democratic Party is losing on every level except the White House level-- and isn't even talking about what to do about it-- or even recognizing there's a problem. "Leaders like Wasserman Schultz and Israel are so concerned about their own narrow careerist agendas that the party is like a useless, unattractive (anti-attractive) pile of stinking garbage. As he wrote, "70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress."
Not only have Republicans won most elections, but they have a perfectly reasonable plan for trying to recapture the White House. But Democrats have nothing at all in the works to redress their crippling weakness down the ballot. Democrats aren't even talking about how to improve on their weak points, because by and large they don't even admit that they exist... The GOP might be in chaos, but Democrats are in a torpor.
The Democrats will never win back Congress with anti-leaders like Wasserman Schultz and Israel in placed. Pelosi has become less than useless and the Senate Democrats are about to elect Wall Street's #1 shill in politics-- Chuck Schumer-- as leader... without so much as a challenge.

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Tuesday, June 02, 2015

New Dems And Blue Dogs Whining It Costs Them More To Run For Congress Than It Costs Real Democrats

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Writing for Stars and Stripes and the Washington Post Sunday, Anne Kim, an operative for Wall Street's deceptively named Progressive Policy Institute (a pro-corporate/anti-worker New Dem outfit that was founded by the DLC to promote neoliberal ideas like NAFTA and the TPP), decries how much more it costs reactionary Democrats-- New Dems and Blue Dogs-- to run for election than it costs real Democrats. It costs the Democrats who support the Republican/Wall Street agenda double what it costs actual Democrats to run for office. Kim's research finds that the fake Dems "spent roughly twice as much as their liberal counterparts to win or defend their seats." That trend is getting more pronounced and she pointed out that for every dollar that the average Progressive Caucus member directly spent to defend his or her seat in 2014, the average right-wing Democrat spent $1.93. By comparison, right-wing Democrats shelled out $1.54 for every campaign dollar spent by liberals by 2012 and $1.65 in 2010.

She doesn't get into it, but these figures include the way Wall Street-backed conservaDems gigantically outspend progressives in primaries, often with the help of the Democratic Beltway Establishment which has now entirely abandoned its pretense of being neutral in primaries. Let's look at a few of the most recent examples from the last cycle. Here are 4 notable races that pitted New Dem types who back cutting Social Security benefits against progressives who favor expanding Social Security. In each case, the corporate-backed right-winger seriously outspent the progressive:
CA-17- Ro Khanna- $4,427,701, Mike Honda- $3,447,979
CA-31- Pete Aguilar- $2,246,265, Eloise Reyes- $1,029,617
IL-13- Ann Callis- $1,936,927, George Gollin- $522,126
VA-08- Don Beyer- $2,688,020, Patrick Hope- $307,599
The New Dem analysis for why they have to spend more than real Democrats never touches on the fact that the New Dems' conservative policy agenda turns off Democratic primary voters. Instead they claim that "moderate districts are by definition competitive... In 2014, outside groups spent an average of $2.2 million per race in New Democrat and Blue Dog districts, compared with an average of $299,339 in Progressive Caucus districts. All told, outside groups spent $121 million on moderate districts, vs. $20.4 million in liberal ones." [Keep in mind that New Dems and Blue Dogs and their propagandists like Kim, always refer to them as "moderate" rather than as the conservatives that they are.]

In January, after Long Island Blue Dog and DCCC chair Steve Israel led the House Democrats to a second consecutive electoral donnybrook, he gave Politico an interview indicating he has every intention of following the same catastrophic strategy that tanked the Democrats in 2010, 2012 and 2014 (the Israel years). Several members of Congress have told me that Israel's pointless, policy-free messaging doesn't appeal to real voters and that that's why so many Democrats just don't bother voting. Israel recruits Republican-lite candidates (in some cases, actual Republicans) and then fills the airwaves with ineffective, garbage messaging and still expects to win. He doesn't win; he loses... and loses and loses. And yet, Pelosi left him in charge-- albeit with another title-- of the DCCC again, where he is already talking about how the Democrats won't win back the House in 2016. He's right. The Democrats will never win back the House as long as Steve Israel is running the show, or even partially running the show.
House Democrats will hammer home the message of “middle-class economics” in hopes of reviving their fortunes in 2016.

After three months of griping that their party’s midterm-election message was too complex and often too diluted, lawmakers who gathered here for a three-day Democratic retreat hope they have found the formula for reversing the losses they took in November.

We’re “absolutely unified on three essential messages going forward: It’s middle class, middle class, middle class,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who had just surveyed 90 Democratic members about what they want to see in 2016. “Everybody agreed that it has to be about the middle.”

Israel, the new chairman of the House Democrats’ messaging arm, said another problem in 2014 was that news on Ebola, Ukraine and Islamic militants knocked domestic concerns from voters’ minds.

...It’s an optimistic goal-- Democrats would need to sweep 30 seats to regain the majority. But Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján, who outlined the party’s political strategy during the retreat, argued that the GOP is overextended going into 2016.

According to a source in the room, the New Mexico Democrat told members that the DCCC has identified 26 House districts that Obama won in 2012 that are now occupied by a GOP lawmaker, and another 23 where Obama got at least 48 percent of the vote.

But Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip, expressed cautious optimism that the party would win back the House in 2016.

“I think we can take back the House in 2016,” Hoyer said. “But if you were betting a whole lot money, would I tell you to bet a whole lot of money that we can take back the House in 2016? I wouldn’t.”

In the survey results released Thursday, Democrats widely said they had lacked a unified message to cut through the noise of the midterms, in addition to failing to appeal to the middle class or capitalize on good news about the economy.

The survey was designed to help Democratic leaders examine what went wrong during the midterms, in which the party ceded 13 seats to Republicans, sinking it further into the minority than Democrats had been in decades. Democrats hope that in 2016, demographics and the excitement of a potential Hillary Clinton presidential ticket will aid their chances.

During a closed-door meeting Thursday, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told lawmakers that during the midterm campaigns, “I listened to your policy discussion and my eyes glazed over.”

“You can’t repeat them outside your rotary club,” Dean told the lawmakers. “Keep it simple. You don’t win on policy. You win on values.”

Other speakers [New Dems and other Wall Street shills] said during the breakout sessions that Democrats need to focus on growth, not redistribution of wealth, when talking to voters.
And the DCCC continues spending virtually all its resources trying to reelect and elect Blue Dogs and New Dems who vote with the GOP and have no connection to the Democratic values-driven grassroots. If you contribute to the DCCC, that's the toilet your money gets flushed down. Instead, consider contributing directly to progressive candidates-- like these challengers and these incumbents.


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Monday, June 01, 2015

The DCCC Vision Of The Democratic Party: Socially Liberal/Fiscally Conservative

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Florida New Dems Gwen Graham and Patrick Murphy-- pro-gay/pro-Choice/pro-corporate/pro-Wall Street

Last week, writing for Raw Story, Greta Christina, exposed the fallacy of social liberals/fiscal conservatives. The entire premise of the vile, contemptible New Dems is based on this bit of delusion. The New Dems are a Wall Street-funded operation whose members tend to be pro-Choice and fine with gay weddings but who want to kick poor people off Social Security and Medicare, allow for job-killing trade policies, and devastate the environment in the name of Big Business' love of "free enterprise." But, as Christina points out, "[y]ou can’t separate fiscal issues from social issues. They’re deeply intertwined. They affect each other. Economic issues often are social issues. And conservative fiscal policies do enormous social harm. That’s true even for the mildest, most generous version of 'fiscal conservatism'-- low taxes, small government, reduced regulation, a free market. These policies perpetuate human rights abuses. They make life harder for people who already have hard lives. Even if the people supporting these policies don’t intend this, the policies are racist, sexist, classist (obviously), ableist, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise socially retrograde. In many ways, they do more harm than so-called 'social policies' that are supposedly separate from economic ones. Here are seven reasons that 'fiscally conservative, socially liberal' is nonsense.
1: Poverty, and the cycle of poverty. This is the big one. Poverty is a social issue. The cycle of poverty-- the ways that poverty itself makes it harder to get out of poverty, the ways that poverty can be a permanent trap lasting for generations-- is a social issue, and a human rights issue.

...[B]eing poor doesn’t just mean you’re likely to stay poor. It means that if you have children, they’re more likely to stay poor. It means you’re less able to give your children the things they need to flourish-- both in easily-measurable tangibles like good nutrition, and less-easily-measurable qualities like a sense of stability. The effect of poverty on children-- literally on their brains, on their ability to literally function-- is not subtle, and it lasts into adulthood. Poverty’s effect on adults is appalling enough. Its effect on children is an outrage.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, poverty-- including the cycle of poverty and the effect of poverty on children-- disproportionately affects African Americans, Hispanics, other people of color, women, trans people, disabled people, and other marginalized groups.

So what does this have to do with fiscal policy? Well, duh. Poverty is perpetuated or alleviated, worsened or improved, by fiscal policy. That’s not the only thing affecting poverty, but it’s one of the biggest things. To list just a few of the most obvious examples of very direct influence: Tax policy. Minimum wage. Funding of public schools and universities. Unionization rights. Banking and lending laws. Labor laws. Funding of public transportation. Public health care. Unemployment benefits. Disability benefits. Welfare policy. Public assistance that doesn’t penalize people for having savings. Child care. Having a functioning infrastructure, having economic policies that support labor, having a tax system that doesn’t steal from the poor to give to the rich, having a social safety net-- a real safety net, not one that just barely keeps people from starving to death but one that actually lets people get on their feet and function-- makes a difference. When these systems are working, and are working well, it’s easier for people to get out of poverty. When they’re not, it’s difficult to impossible. And I haven’t even gotten into the fiscal policy of so-called “free” trade, and all the ways it feeds poverty both in the U.S. and around the world.

Fiscal policy affects poverty. And in the United States, “fiscally conservative” means supporting fiscal policies that perpetuate poverty. “Fiscally conservative” means slashing support systems that help the poor, lowering taxes for the rich, cutting corners for big business, and screwing labor-- policies that both worsen poverty and make it even more of an inescapable trap.

2: Domestic violence, workplace harassment, and other abuse. See above, re: cycle of poverty. If someone is being beaten by their partner, harassed or assaulted at work, abused by their parents-- and if they’re poor, and if there’s fuck-all for a social safety net-- it’s a hell of a lot harder for them to leave. What’s more, the stress of poverty itself-- especially inescapable, entrapped poverty-- contributes to violence and abuse.

And you know who gets disproportionately targeted with domestic violence and workplace harassment? Women. Especially women of color. And LGBT folks-- especially trans women of color, and LGBT kids and teenagers. Do you care about racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist violence? Then quit undercutting the social safety net. A solid safety net-- a safety net that isn’t made of tissue paper, and that doesn’t require the people in it to constantly scramble just to stay there, much less to climb out-- isn’t going to magically eliminate this violence and harassment. But it sure makes it easier for people to escape it.

3: Disenfranchisement. There’s a cycle that in some ways is even uglier than the cycle of poverty-- because it blocks people from changing the policies that keep the cycle of poverty going. I’m talking about the cycle of disenfranchisement.

I’m talking about the myriad ways that the super-rich control the political process-- and in controlling the political process, both make themselves richer and give themselves even more control over the political process. Purging voter rolls. Cutting polling place hours. Cutting back on early voting-- especially in poor districts. Voter ID laws. Roadblocks to voter registration-- noticeably aimed at people likely to vote progressive. Questionable-at-best voter fraud detection software, which-- by some wild coincidence-- tends to flag names that are common among minorities. Eliminating Election Day registration. Restricting voter registration drives. Gerrymandering-- creating voting districts with the purpose of skewing elections in your favor.

Voter suppression is a real thing in the United States. And these policies are set in place by the super-rich-- or, to be more precise, by the government officials who are buddies with the super-rich and are beholden to them. These policies are not set in place to reduce voter fraud: voter fraud is extremely rare in the U.S., to the point of being almost non-existent. The policies are set in place to make voting harder for people who would vote conservative plutocrats out of office. If you’re skeptical about whether this is actually that deliberate, whether these policies really are written by plutocratic villains cackling over how they took even more power from the already disempowered — remember Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai, who actually said, in words, “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

...4: Racist policing. There’s a whole lot going on with racist policing in the United States. Obviously. But a non-trivial chunk of it is fiscal policy. Ferguson shone a spotlight on this, but it isn’t just in Ferguson-- it’s all over the country. In cities and counties and towns across the United States, the government is funded, in large part, by tickets and fines for municipal violations-- and by the meta-system of interest, penalties, surcharges, and fees on those tickets and fines, which commonly turn into a never-ending debt amounting to many, many times the original fine itself.

This is, for all intents and purposes, a tax. It’s a tax on poor people. It’s a tax on poor people for being poor, for not having a hundred dollars in their bank account that they can drop at a moment’s notice on a traffic ticket. And it’s a tax that disproportionately targets black and brown people. When combined with the deeply ingrained culture of racism in many many many police forces-- a police culture that hammers black and brown people for the crime of existing-- it is a tax on black and brown people, purely for being black or brown. But Loki forbid we raise actual taxes. Remember the fiscal conservative mantra: “Low taxes good! High taxes bad!” High taxes are bad-- unless we don’t call them a tax. If we call it a penalty or a fine, that’s just peachy. And if it’s disproportionately levied by a racist police force on poor black people, who have little visibility or power and are being systematically disenfranchised-- that’s even better. What are they going to do about it? And who’s going to care? It’s not as if black lives matter. What’s more: You know some of the programs that have been proposed to reduce racist policing? Programs like automatic video monitoring of police encounters? An independent federal agency to investigate and discipline local policing, to supplement or replace ineffective, corrupt, or non-existent self-policing? Those take money. Money that comes from taxes. Money that makes government a little bit bigger. Fiscal conservatism-- the reflexive cry of “Lower taxes! Smaller government!”-- contributes to racist policing. Even if you, personally, oppose racist policing, supporting fiscal conservatism makes you part of the problem.

5: Drug policy and prison policy. Four words: The new Jim Crow. Drug war policies in the United States-- including sentencing policies, probation policies, which drugs are criminalized and how severely, laws banning felons convicted on drug charges from voting, and more-- have pretty much zero effect on reducing the harm that can be done by drug abuse. They don’t reduce drug use, they don’t reduce drug addiction, they don’t reduce overdoses, they don’t reduce accidents or violence that can be triggered by drug abuse. If anything, these policies make all of this worse.

But they do have one powerful effect: Current drug policies in the United States are very, very good at creating and perpetuating a permanent black and brown underclass. They are very good at creating a permanent class of underpaid, disenfranchised, disempowered servants, sentenced to do shit work at low wages for white people, for the rest of their lives.

This is not a bug. This is a feature.

You don’t have to be a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist to see how current U.S. drug policy benefits the super-rich and super-powerful. It is a perfect example of a “social issue” with powerful ripple effects into the economy. And that’s not even getting into the issue of how the wealthy might benefit from super-cheap prison labor, labor that borders so closely on slavery it’s hard to distinguish it. So people who are well-served by the current economy are strongly motivated to keep drug policy firmly in place.

Plus, two more words: Privatized prisons. Privatized prisons mean prisons run by people who have no interest in reducing the prison population-- people who actually benefit from a high crime rate, a high recidivism rate, severe sentencing policies, severe probation policies, and other treats that keep the prison population high. It’s as if we had privatized fire departments, who got paid more the more fires they put out-- and thus had every incentive, not to improve fire prevention techniques and policies and education, but to gut them.

Privatization of prisons is a conservative fiscal policy. It’s a policy based on the conservative ideal of low taxes, small government, and the supposedly miraculous power of the free market to make any system more efficient. And it’s a policy with a powerful social effect-- the effect of doing tremendous harm.

...6: Deregulation. This one is really straightforward. Deregulation of business is a conservative fiscal policy. And it has a devastating effect on marginalized people. Do I need to remind anyone of what happened when the banking and financial industries were deregulated?

Do I need to remind anyone of who was most hurt by those disasters? Overwhelmingly poor people, working-class people, and people of color.

But this isn’t just about banking and finance. Deregulation of environmental standards, workplace safety standards, utilities, transportation, media-- all of these have the entirely unsurprising effect of making things better for the people who own the businesses, and worse for the people who patronize them and work for them. Contrary to the fiscal conservative myth, an unregulated free market does not result in exceptional businesses fiercely competing for the best workers and lavishly serving the public. It results in monopoly. It results in businesses with the unofficial slogan, “We Don’t Care — We Don’t Have To.” It results in 500-pound gorillas, sleeping anywhere they want.

7: “Free” trade. This one is really straightforward. So-called “free” trade policies have a horrible effect on human rights, both in the United States and overseas. They let corporations hire labor in countries where labor laws-- laws about minimum wage, workplace safety, working hours, child labor-- are weak to nonexistent. They let corporations hire labor in countries where they can pay children as young as five years old less than a dollar a day, to work 12 or even 16 hours a day, in grossly unsafe workplaces and grueling working conditions that make Dickensian London look like a socialist Utopia.

And again-- this is not a bug. This is a feature. This is the whole damn point of “free” trade: by reducing labor costs to practically nothing, it provides cheap consumer products to American consumers, and it funnels huge profits to already obscenely rich corporations. It also decimates blue-collar employment in the United States-- and it feeds human rights abuses around the world. Thank you, fiscal conservatism!
And thank you New Dems and the DCCC and DSCC which both promote the toxic New Dem social liberal/fiscal conservative ideology as the direction Democrats need to move in. These are the dozen worst Democrats-- in terms of voting for the Republican agenda-- in the House:
Gwen Graham (New Dem-FL)
Brad Ashford (New Dem-NE)
Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ)
Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)
Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)
Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA)
Although a couple of the worst reactionaries and Blue Dogs are socially conservative/fiscally conservative, almost everyone on the list tends towards relative social liberalism as well as the tragic fiscal conservatism that has them voting across the aisle with the Republicans so much-- in the case of the worst of them, like Gwen Graham, Brad Ashford and Kyrsten Sinema, more than two-thirds of the time.

The real tragedy is that the DCCC and the DSCC-- for all their mealy-mouthed protestations of "neutrality" in primaries-- continue recruiting fiscally conservative candidates, in the image of Blue Dog Steve Israel and New Dem Joe Crowley (both crooked Wall Street-backed politicians being high up in House Democratic Party leadership). The DCCC gets into trouble by recruiting these awful conservative candidates-- some actual opportunistic Republicans-- and either lose outright or win and then lose the seat soon after when Democratic voters realize they've been sold a bill of goods. Yesterday, reporting for Roll Call, Emily Cahn, wrote that the DCCC, still smarting from the disasters of their past recruitment "strategy," is reassessing-- or at least cultivating an image of reassessing the failed recruitment agenda.

"[T]his cycle," she writes, "the DCCC is holding off for the moment on playing in primaries, according to nearly a half-dozen Democratic operatives who had conversations with the committee’s leadership. It’s a lesson operatives say the committee learned after it 'rushed to judgment' in a few races, endorsing candidates who didn’t live up to the DCCC’s expectations."
“They’re being more methodical this cycle,” said one Democratic consultant who worked on competitive House contests last cycle-- who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about conversations with the DCCC. “They still want strong candidates … but I think last time it was more a push just to get people in so they had time to raise money, and less of a qualitative look at the full district and who else might be out there. And so they aren’t rushing to judgment.”

...Some Jumpstart candidates hailed as top recruits wound up being disappointments on the trail-- losing their races by wide margins, even in competitive seats.
Horrible New Dem-type candidates pushed by Steve Israel who led the Democrats into jaw-dropping defeats-- some in heavily blue districts-- included Jennifer Garrison (OH), Sean Eldridge (NY), Domenic Recchia (NY), Ann Callis (IL), Jerry Cannon (MI), Erin Billbray (NV), Andrew Romanoff (CO), Kevin Strouse (PA), Marjorie Margolies (PA), John Lewis (MT), Pam Byrnes (MI), James Lee Witt (AR), Emily Cain (ME), Bobby McKenzie (MI), Aaron Woolf (NY), Martha Robertson (NY), Suzanne Patrick (VA), Manan Trivedi (PA) and Nick Casey (WV).

Fiscally conservative Democratic incumbents who followed lame DCCC messaging and were defeated-- primarily by Democratic voters' decision to boycott the elections-- included Blue Dogs and New Dems like Ron Barber (AZ), Nick Rahall (WV), Pete Gallego (TX), Dan Maffei (NY), John Barrow (GA), Joe Garcia (FL), and Brad Schneider (IL). Several other putrid conservaDem incumbents managed to hold onto their seats by the skin of their teeth, like Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA), Ami Bera (New Dem-CA), and Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY).
The committee’s endorsement of veteran Kevin Strouse did not deter scientist Shaughnessy Naughton from entering the primary to run against Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania. Strouse barely beat Naughton in the primary and went on to be a disappointing candidate in the general election, capturing just 38 percent against Fitzpatrick despite the district’s competitive bent. Naughton is running again in 2016 in this now-open seat, and faces a primary against state Rep. Steve Santarsiero.

Initial Jumpstart recruit Domenic M. Recchia Jr., now lamented as one of the weakest candidates of the cycle, lost to scandal-plagued Michael G. Grimm, R-N.Y., by double-digits, despite vastly outpacing him in the fundraising race. Grimm resigned after pleading guilty to tax fraud.

Former Judge Ann Callis, another Jumpstart alumna, was uncomfortable in her role as a candidate despite a stellar résumé on paper. She struggled to connect with voters and lost to GOP Rep. Rodney Davis by a 17-point margin, despite the Illinois district’s even partisan split.

Looking toward 2016, Democratic operatives say the change in the DCCC’s recruitment strategy has a lot to do with the fundamental differences in the cycle... This cycle, with the party anticipating more favorable turnout boosted by likely presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrats say the DCCC has more time to let fields form before deciding whether to play in primaries.

“They might still jump in some races where it matters,” said a third Democratic operative who works on House races. “But assuming it’s going to be better year with presidential-level turnout, there’s no need to dabble as much.”

Endorsing in primary contests always comes with risks. If the other candidate ends up securing the nomination, they could cause troubles for the party in a general election. It could also anger grass-roots activists in the district, who help mobilize critical voters.

Knowing the risks, the National Republican Congressional Committee does not publicly back candidates in primaries-- even when more electable choices face rabble-rousing fringe candidates.

While the House committees appear to be taking a more hands-off approach to primary endorsements, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has so far endorsed candidates in five top Senate contests.
The DSCC is aggressively pushing very conservative "former" Republican Patrick Murphy against Alan Grayson in Florida. The DCCC is running their own batch of conservative shitheads, "former" Republicans like Monica Vernon in Iowa and Mike Derrick in New York, as well as mystery meat candidates like Shawn O'Connor in New Hampshire. Democratic primary voters want candidates who will stand up for progressive values and policies and do not care about the careerist game-playing among party bosses like Schumer, Israel, Hoyer and Crowley. Democratic primary voters want candidates with a New Deal perspective, not a New Dem perspective. If you are looking for candidates who are progressive both socially and economically... you can find challengers here and incumbents here.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

How Can House Democrats Avoid Another Electoral Catastrophe-- Anything Short Of Winning Back The House-- In 2016?

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After last cycle's electoral debacle for the Democrats, I spoke with a dozen Democratic candidates from competitive districts who felt they lost, at least in part, because of astonishing DCCC malfeasance. Almost every single one of them brought up Steve Israel, and not one person said a single word in his defense. Below is an unpublished-- at least until now-- op-ed by one of the candidates who should be serving in Congress now but because of conscious decisions by Israel and his incompetent team has moved on and will no longer participate in Democratic Party electoral politics. A piece like this could have been written by any of a dozen candidates.
No Defense for the Democrats' Electoral Malpractice
by Candidate X


Last week’s result for Democrats was nothing short of an embarrassment. This is a failure at the highest level of the Democratic congressional leadership.

The Congressional map has become redder and redder since 2010, one failure after another for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They let the Republicans control the debate. Chairman Steve Israel’s DCCC created a bunch of spineless, feeble Democrats running for Congress around the country.

The DCCC’s strategy was, either inadvertently or stupidly, to minimize any Democratic achievements.

The Affordable Care Act, while flawed as a result of legislative caving to the GOP on single-payer healthcare, has resulted in the lowest percentage of uninsured Americans on record. Instead of coming up with a conversation that speaks to most Americans on healthcare, they abandoned it. The stock market hit record highs, unemployment is the lowest since 2008, and gas prices are the cheapest in years-- all under a Democratic president. But none of that was visible in the 2014 campaign for Congress. Congressional Democrats should have asked voters the question, “Would you rather go back to 2008?” There was no coherent message about what electing Democrats would get the American people. Instead, it seems like the DCCC strategy focused on sending more e-mails with ridiculous subject lines asking for a $3 donation.

Having been a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives [last year], I have personally seen the clumsy operation of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and it is shameful. Not only is there frequent turnover of staff, but most are young and politically inexperienced. On my many trips to Washington for meetings with the DCCC, they mostly included sitdowns with a 20-something recent college graduate who is a supposed “expert” in political strategy and my district. In fact, I met with Chairman Steve Israel only one time in three years over two campaigns, which resulted in canned e-mails from amateurish DCCC staff “directing” me what to do. The sum of the DCCC support to me, and other candidates in what should be viable districts, was to give unattainable fundraising goals and advise you to run from the President if you must.

In order to win, Democrats need a clear message on what a Democratic-led Congress would get them. Mushy talk like ending gridlock and opposing the right-wing tea partiers isn’t enough. Democrats should pick popular progressive positions and tell the American people, if we regain the majority we will raise the minimum wage, reform our immigration laws, enact universal background checks for gun sales, expand Social Security, give you student loan fairness, bring you equal pay for equal work, and we’ll fix the Affordable Care Act to make it work even better. These are popular progressive positions that enjoy a majority of support from Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, yet they’re opposed by the Republican Party.

Democrats deserve new leaders with fresh ideas who can deliver results. From the DCCC chairman all the way to the minority leader, this party’s congressional leadership needs a big shakeup. 2016 could bring great things for Democrats including the blue wave we’ve all been waiting for, but not if DCCC incompetence continues to rule the day.
Pelosi has since appointed a new DCCC chairman, an inexperienced novice, Ben Ray Luján, who is completely under Israel's thumb-- and she appointed Israel to a new position to shape Democratic Party messaging, the job Elizabeth Warren has in the House. There is virtually no job that Israel, a reactionary and grotesquely corrupt Blue Dog, is less suited for. The Democrats are doomed until the old-- really old-- leadership retires. Meanwhile, you can find non-Israel/non-Luján progressive candidates on this page.


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Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Denial Reigns Supreme At The DCCC

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The DCCC managed to lose 13 incumbents' seats and every single seat they went after held by a Republican-- with two exceptions, both right-wing Blue Dogs who are expected to vote fairly consistently with the GOP. And all this-- along with a system riven with internal corruption-- ate up the tens of millions of dollars Steve Israel never ceased bragging about-- plus another $12 million he borrowed, putting the DCCC into serious debt. Worse is that Pelosi picked a tepid placeholder as the new DCCC chair, Ben Ray Luján, who has no vision for changing anything at the failed committee Israel spent 4 years running into the ground.

Luján's first act as chair was to announce he would be keep everything as is-- as though everyone had done a fabulous job and the committee had won back the House-- starting with re-hiring incompetent and worthless Executive Director Kelly Ward and her pathetic self-serving staffers. The Republicans must be dancing for joy. Scott Bland at the National Journal had a chat with Luján-- and it sounds like he's determined to emulate Israel's losing ways. Like Israel, he's taking false solace in the fact that the DCCC didn't lose even more seats. He has the mindset of a loser. "I think we really have to take into consideration that based on some of the modeling and the national mood last cycle… we could have lost 20 or more seats.The team we had in place… kept that to 13. As we're moving into all of this, that's something to build off of." He was enthusiastic, for example, about the DCCC's horribly failed recruiting, which yielded dozens of losers.
After another disappointing election for House Democrats, one that gave Republicans their largest majority in almost a century, the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a seemingly incongruous message: Keep calm and carry on.

DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján is adamant, despite a 13-seat loss in November, that the committee has more to build on than to fix. After all, you don't have to make mistakes to lose an election, especially in the kind of horrible environment Democrats faced this year.

The committee has numerous building blocks-- its field program, digital program, aggressive recruiting, and especially its strong fundraising-- for 2016 that helped mitigate November's losses and will position the party to take advantage when there is a better political environment in the future, Luján said. Unlike the political environment or overall party messaging, those factors are under the DCCC's complete control.

But some Democrats on and off Capitol Hill have grown concerned since the election about whether the DCCC is reacting with enough urgency to another disappointing election result. Luján's first move as chairman was to retain Executive Director Kelly Ward, who echoed the new chairman's could've-been-worse attitude in a statement when she was rehired. The Democratic National Committee has convened a "Victory Task Force" to pinpoint areas where the party "can strengthen and improve operations," but Luján didn't offer specifics on areas where the DCCC could improve.

Asked to name one thing he would change at the committee after having some time to review things, Lujan said, "We want to win more seats." And, he said, he wants to keep fellow members engaged with the committee.

That's hardly a reboot.

"After three cycles of underperforming expectations, that would seem to highlight the need for new thinking," said one Democratic consultant who asked for anonymity to speak freely. (The consultant compared the DCCC's line to Kevin Bacon's character in Animal House, who shouts, "Remain calm! All is well!" during the movie's climactic stampede.) "I would think that at some point they're going to have a problem convincing donors to give money without results."

...On the campaign side, Luján is reprising Israel's early recruiting efforts from years past. One of Democrats' losing 2014 candidates, Emily Cain of Maine, came to the DCCC Wednesday morning for meetings with Luján and other party leaders about running for the Democratic-leaning district again in 2016. Luján cited districts Democrats lost in Nevada and Iowa, plus a GOP-held open seat in the Philadelphia suburbs, as top targets on which he's already focused.

President Obama carried 26 GOP-held districts when he won reelection in 2012, including the Maine seat that Luján wants Cain to run for again.
Cain is a pathetic New Dem who was unable to inspire Democratic voters because she didn't stand for anything except being a woman and a shill for EMILY's List. She lost to a Maine laughing stock, teabagger Bruce Polliquin, who wasn't considered a serious contender, but who beat her 133,112 (47.1%) to 118,070 (41.8%) in a district that Obama beat Romney in 53-44%-- and which had reelected Democrat Mike Michaud in 2012, 58-42%. And this despite Cain having spent $1,963,989 to Poliquin's $1,679,893. This was Cain's first ad; like the rest of her insipid, platitude-ridden campaign, it didn't convince anyone to vote for her.

Even worse than Cain is lifelong Republican Monica Vernon, an opportunist who switched to the Democratic Party and ran a losing campaign this year as Lt Gov. Before that, she had entered the IA-01 open seat primary when Bruce Braley announced he was running for the Senate. She came in a distant second to Pat Murphy, who beat her 36.7-23.6%. She's politically grotesque and a friend of mine at the DCCC tells me Luján is all excited-- excited that she's a former Republican and he's trying to recruit her. It's as though Steve Israel never left! Vernon and her husband, Bill, were GOP stalwarts and contributed thousands of dollars to local and national Republicans, including, in 2012 to Braley's GOP opponent Ben Lange, as well as to clowns like Chuck Grassley, John McCain and $4,000 to the Iowa State Republican Party. If anyone doubted Luján would be a Steve Israel doppelgänger, this should set them straight.



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Monday, December 08, 2014

The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party Claims It Still Doesn't Have A Silver Stake Through It's Heart

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Even House progressives tell me it's Hoyer's turn to be leader next-- doom!

Adam Green of the PCCC pointed out when Landrieu was handily defeated by some hack GOP nonentity Saturday that the last of the Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party who prevented the public option in the Affordable Care Act-- the others being Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln-- had all been driven from office within 4 years; I think he left out Mark Pryor-- but he also lost his Senate seat last month. Good riddance to all of them. Take a look at the ProgressivePunch lifetime crucial vote scores of the half dozen Democratic Senators who have voted the most frequently against progressive values in the current session:
Tom Carper (DE)- 72.30
Claire McCaskill (MO)- 72.13
Kay Hagan (NC)- 70.67 defeated
Mark Pryor (AR)- 66.50 defeated
Mary Landrieu (LA)- 65.42 defeated
Joe Manchin (WV)- 61.75
They wreck the Democratic Party brand and discourage voters with progressive values from bothering to go to the polls. And there are even more of them in the House-- Wall Street-owned New Dems and Blue Dogs, dwindling but still with enough clout within the party-- thanks to well placed corrupt conservative leaders like Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Crowley, Steve Israel-- to confuse voters about what it even means to be a Democrat. These are the dozen Democrats in the House who voted most frequently against progressive initiatives and principles in the 2013-14 session, along with their ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores for the current session:
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)- 26.20 forced to retire
John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)- 26.64 defeated
Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC)- 27.68 forced to retire
Ron Barber (Blue Dog-AZ)- 32.58 defeated
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 33.62
Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX)- 34.07 defeated
Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 36.20
Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)- 39.47 forced to retire
Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)- 40.17
Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV)- 40.61 defeated
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 41.67
Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)- 44.59 defeated
What does the Democratic Party learn from these defeats? Nothing absolutely, nothing. The corporate whores and Wall Street shills just want to double down on their failed Blue Dog/New Dem approach which is so hated by Democratic grassroots voters-- and so beloved Inside-the-Beltway. I found this clueless piece from one of the Beltway trade publications republished yesterday by the Arizona Daily Star. [Warning, they refer to reactionaries and conservatives as "moderates," a well-worn Beltway trick to mislead readers.]
The Blue Dog Coalition of moderate House Democrats is reaching a turning point in its 20-year history, after losing more than a third of its members by the end of 2014 through retirements and election defeats.

It’s now down to a dozen returning members, less than a quarter of its peak.

Veteran members including Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota, the last original Blue Dog, and Jim Cooper of Tennessee hope to promote a rebound by the group.

“It’s always darkest just before the dawn,” Cooper said.

Blue Dogs have a long history of surviving adversity since they became a caucus with about 20 members in 1995, he said, and he predicted they will regain strength in a tough political environment.

Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University, said the Blue Dogs will be hard-pressed to reclaim the clout they had in 2010, when the group had more than 50 members and won enactment of a top priority: the pay-as-you-go law, which required that spending and tax bills not increase the deficit.

Southern voters have turned against Blue Dogs in part because much of the region’s electorate opposes President Obama and party leaders such as Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Black said. “They are selling a product no one wants to buy.”

But despite recent losses, Cooper said Blue Dogs will have influence in the 114th Congress because of Republican divisions and the ability of Senate Democrats to block partisan bills.

“House Blue Dogs will play a quieter role. It will take a Republican split before we can be clearly decisive in a vote. But there are going to be many Republican splits... There are going to be plenty of opportunities for Blue Dogs to make a key difference on legislation,” Cooper said.

Cooper is just one of four returning Blue Dogs from the South, with Reps. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. and David Scott, both of Georgia, and Henry Cuellar of Texas.

Cuellar and other Blue Dogs predict loose coalitions with Republicans on shared priorities where Republicans hope to deter-- or override-- vetoes by Obama. For example, they envision common ground with the Republicans on tax cuts, giving trade promotion authority to the president, regulatory curbs and energy sweeteners, including approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Peterson predicted that the group will expand its ranks quickly from the freshman class. Among the new recruits are Reps.-elect Gwen Graham of Florida and Brad Ashford of Nebraska, who have already attended meetings, Peterson said.

Membership “ebbs and flows,” Peterson said. He narrowly won re-election and must decide whether to run again in 2016.

Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, a longtime ally of the Blue Dogs, said he and other party leaders will give wide leeway to the coalition’s members to vote their consciences, and will try to help them promote priorities and win re-election.

“They need to bounce back, and they will bounce back,” Hoyer said. “We are going to work at it.”

UPDATE: Let The South Go

Mike Tomasky explains why the South is a lost cause for the Democrats-- and why they should embrace that.
At the congressional level, and from there on down, the Democrats should just forget about the place. They should make no effort, except under extraordinary circumstances, to field competitive candidates. The national committees shouldn’t spend a red cent down there. This means every Senate seat will be Republican, and 80 percent of the House seats will be, too. The Democrats will retain their hold on the majority-black districts, and they’ll occasionally be competitive in a small number of other districts in cities and college towns. But they’re not going win Southern seats (I include here with some sadness my native West Virginia, which was not a Southern state when I was growing up but culturally is one now). And they shouldn’t try.

...Trying to win Southern seats is not worth the ideological cost for Democrats. As Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen recently told my colleague Ben Jacobs, the Democratic Party cannot (and I’d say should not) try to calibrate its positions to placate Southern mores: “It’s come to pass, and really a lot of white Southerners vote on gays and guns and God, and we’re not going to ever be too good on gays and guns and God.”

Cohen thinks maybe some economic populism could work, and that could be true in limited circumstances. But I think even that is out the window now. In the old days, drenched in racism as the South was, it was economically populist. Glass and Steagall, those eponymous bank regulators, were both Southern members of Congress. But today, as we learned in Sunday’s Times, state attorneys general, many in the South, are colluding with energy companies to fight federal regulation of energy plants.

It’s lost. It’s gone. A different country. And maybe someday it really should be. I’ll save that for another column. Until that day comes, the Democratic Party shouldn’t bother trying. If they get no votes from the region, they will in turn owe it nothing, and in time the South, which is the biggest welfare moocher in the world in terms of the largesse it gets from the more advanced and innovative states, will be on its own, which is what Southerners always say they want anyway.

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Sunday, November 23, 2014

Those DCCC Emails Will Still Be Generated Even When Only Cockroaches Remain On The Planet

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Neither gone nor forgotten

The DCCC is still sending out their despised e-mails. Wednesday, deposed committee chairman, Steve Israel, sent one titled "I'm So Proud." The greatest failure in the history of the committee but he's proud... why? Because, he says, "Moments ago, we learned that we beat Boehner in one of the last uncalled Congressional races. This one was Republicans’ top target in the entire country. The Republicans spent a fortune to elect Obamacare-repealing, Social Security privatizing extremist Doug Ose. In fact, Boehner, Rove, and the Republican outside groups spent more money to win California’s 7th district than any other race in the country. On Election Night, the race was too-close-to-call. But in the end, their right-wing cash was no match for your grassroots strength. Your donations and volunteer hours allowed us to reach out to key voters over 126,000 times-- and pull off a big victory!" The sad little man is in serious denial-- and because Pelosi gave him another undeserved leadership position, he's putting the Democratic Party in serious jeopardy. Obama won that California district both times he ran. It was so close because the wretched New Dem incumbent is utterly unqualified to be in Congress or to represent himself as a Democrat. His crap, tepid voting record-- a ProgressivePunch crucial lifetime progressive score of 51.54%-- inspired contempt from Republicans and confused resignation from Democrats.

Of course it wasn't just the discredited Israel-- discredited everywhere except in the minds of Pelosi's geriatric leadership clique-- who was sending out pitifully self-justifying e-mails. One DCCC staffer bragged about how they won races because they spent money on them. They also lost races-- far more-- that they spent money on. "Nearly half (47%) of the DCCC IE dollars were invested in races that House Democrats won," she wrote. Really? Well over half was spent on races they lost. And she's as excited as Israel is that of the 14 races too close to call on Election Night, Dems have won 13 so far and Republicans have won none. Is that some kind of a new benchmark we should be measuring success by? Races in blue districts that should never have been close to begin with wind up being won?

This morning, I was going through an old copy of The Nation from 2002, soon after the Republicans won a midterm and claimed a mandate. Jim Hightower-- remember a dozen years ago-- wrote about what the Beltway Democrats must do to regain the trust of grassroots voters-- "Only if the party gets a clue, gets a program and gets with the people." They didn't and they won't now either, not with the sad sacks running the DC party leadership.
PROGRAM: To get them, the party has to get a program, because (here's another wacky concept) people tend to vote when their self-interest is touched. So let's touch it, unabashedly and unequivocally, by offering a short to-do list that would include such measurable benefits as (1) a tax cut for working stiffs: remove the cap (now $85,000) on the grossly regressive payroll tax, reduce the percentage bite and spread the burden up to include the billionaires' club; (2) healthcare for all, provided by a single-payer system; (3) free education for everyone, preschool through higher ed, modeled after the enormously successful GI Bill; (4) energy independence for America through a ten-year moonshot project that'll put Americans to work building an oil-free future based on alternative technologies and systems; (5) public financing of all elections, so we can get our government back from the greedheads; and (6) [Add Your Favorite Here]. A six-pack is plenty. Stay focused.

PEOPLE: Get out of Washington, literally and figuratively. At present, progressive groups and funders direct probably 80 percent of our energy, talent and money toward DC, putting only 20 percent into the countryside. Yet our strength is not inside the Beltway but out here, where people are doing great things and wondering why the Democratic Party isn't with them. Reverse that ratio. Start by scrubbing McAuliffe's $28 million plan to upscale the party's headquarters, move the DNC's whole kit and caboodle into an abandoned, gone-to-China factory somewhere in the heartland and put the money into building a grassroots organization that communicates, organizes and mobilizes across America, block by block.

Politics can't be viewed as something that involves people only in the last thirty days of an election. Rather, to be a movement capable of governing, it has to be rooted in people's reality. In addition to high-tech outreach, we have to get back to a high-touch politics that physically, emotionally and soulfully connects with people's lives 365 days a year. Yes, talk issues. But through potluck suppers, block parties, festivals, salons and saloons. Fewer Meetings, More Fun. There's a bumper sticker.

Nothing's more fun than winning, and it's time to tell the Democratic jefes that winning in politics requires getting more people (not more money) than the other side gets. To get people, there has to be a long-term strategy of going to them with something of interest. As the fighting populist Fred Harris puts it: "You can't have a mass movement without the masses."
And another DCCC e-mail, this one from Ben Ray Luján, right after he announced he would keep the incompetent Executive Director and the entire incompetent, corrupt staff in place: "My name is Ben Ray Luján. I’m honored to be emailing you as the new Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. There’s so much I want to say, but right now we don’t have time for pleasantries." And then he asked everyone to sign a petition so the DCCC can harvest contact info they can monetize.

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