Do You Love It When Right-Wing Perverts Get Into Sex Trouble? Most Recent Victims: Trent Franks (R) And Harold Ford (Blue Dog)

Note from one of my neighbors-- a prominent movie director-- when the Trent Franks news started breaking yesterday: "Your old buddy must’ve got caught in the men's room with a pecker in his hair lip.

The world is going nuts…"

In Sacramento, when Democratic state legislators are too conservative-- like as bad as the worsts Republicans-- Democrats and their union allies conspire to send them to Washington as congressmen. Two really horrible state legislators-- corrupt beyond normal bounds and as right-wing as a bad Republican-- Juan Vargas and later Lou Correa-- ran for Congress the entire establishment rallied around them. They tried to do the same thing with Isadore Hall but got sideswiped when his constituents were too smart to fall for the ploy and shocked the string corrupt California political class by elected progressive champion Nanette Barragán instead.

But in Arizona, they had a different trick. The Republican-controled state legislature was happy with Trent Franks' extreme right voting record but after he got caught fooling around with a young man, the state Republicans were happy to see him go off to DC as a congressman. He even managed to find some kind of mail order bride and ordered up a couple of insta-kids. He's one of the most loudly and obnoxiously homophobic members of Congress... but a closet case.

So when rumors started circulating Thursday that he was resigning immediately from Congress because of "inappropriate behavior," those who know about his penchant for the male sex organs, started wondering if he was credibly accused of having sexually harassed someone with a penis again. Republicans don't resign because of abusing women-- see Texas pervert Blake Farenthold, happily still in the House-- but they do resign when they get caught with the meat in their mouths (Mark Foley, Aaron Schock stand out lately).

AZCentral.com, part of the Arizona Republic:

Rumors have swirled for years about Franks’ extracurricular activities.

“I heard rumors of these types of problems in the past,” longtime Republican strategist Chuck Coughlin told me. “And in today’s society it doesn’t come as a big surprise anymore.”

Franks was all set to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012 until suddenly, he wasn’t. Multiple people have told me that his after-hours activities caught up to him.

“The information was there to be had, and it was shared with him, so he walked away from the race,” one consultant told me.

Another told me that Franks wrote sexually charged text messages a decade ago to a Republican operative-- texts that never came to light.

  Whatever the reason, Franks' Senate campaign abruptly ended before it began.

...Expect two things:

1. He'll resign citing family health concerns.

Ah... late yesterday afternoon, his statement came out. No reason to believe it's true by here in is in full:

"I have always tried to create a very warm and supportive atmosphere for every last person who has ever worked in my congressional office. It is my deepest conviction that there are many staffers, former and present, who would readily volunteer to substantiate this fact.

"Given the nature of numerous allegations and reports across America in recent weeks, I want to first make one thing completely clear. I have absolutely never physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my congressional staff.

"However, I do want to take full and personal responsibility for the ways I have broached a topic that, unbeknownst to me until very recently, made certain individuals uncomfortable. And so, I want to shed light on how those conversations came about.

"My wife and I have long struggled with infertility. We experienced three miscarriages.

"We pursued adoption on more than one occasion only to have the adoptive mothers in each case change their mind prior to giving birth.

"A wonderful and loving lady, to whom we will be forever grateful, acted as a gestational surrogate for our twins and was able to carry them successfully to live birth. The process by which they were conceived was a pro-life approach that did not discard or throw away any embryos.

"My son and daughter are unspeakable gifts of God that have brought us our greatest earthly happiness in the 37 years we have been married.

"When our twins were approximately 3 years old, we made a second attempt with a second surrogate who was also not genetically related to the child. Sadly, that pregnancy also resulted in miscarriage.

"We continued to have a desire to have at least one additional sibling, for which our children had made repeated requests.

"Due to my familiarity and experience with the process of surrogacy, I clearly became insensitive as to how the discussion of such an intensely personal topic might affect others.

"I have recently learned that the Ethics Committee is reviewing an inquiry regarding my discussion of surrogacy with two previous female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable. I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress.

"We are in an unusual moment in history – there is collective focus on a very important problem of justice and sexual impropriety. It is so important that we get this right for everyone, especially for victims.

"But in the midst of this current cultural and media climate, I am deeply convinced I would be unable to complete a fair House Ethics investigation before distorted and sensationalized versions of this story would put me, my family, my staff, and my noble colleagues in the House of Representatives through hyperbolized public excoriation. Rather than allow a sensationalized trial by media damage those things I love most, this morning I notified House leadership that I will be leaving Congress as of January 31st, 2018. It is with the greatest sadness, that for the sake of the causes I deeply love, I must now step back from the battle I have spent over three decades fighting. I hope my resignation will remain distinct from the great gains we have made. My time in Congress serving my constituents, America and the Constitution is and will remain one of God’s greatest gift to me in life."

Now let's translate that into something a bit more anchored in reality: The House Ethics Committee is investigating-- or at least was threatening to investigate-- Franks for "conduct that constitutes sexual harassment and/or retaliation for opposing sexual harassment." Even Paul Ryan-- who is still protecting Blake Farenthold, admits that the people complaining about Franks have "credible claims of misconduct."

UPDATE: He sure didn't want that Ethics Committee investigation putting anything out about his sordid, hypocritical life! A few hours ago, Franks once again used the phony relationship with his "wife" to end an awkward situation. After pressure from Ryan and McCarthy,  he issued a new statement saying he won't try to hang around until January 31. He's out immediately; maybe they'll take a river cruise down De Nile:

"Last night, my wife was admitted to the hospital in Washington, D.C. due to an ongoing ailment. After discussing options with my family, we came to the conclusion that the best thing for our family now would be for me to tender my previous resignation effective today, December 8th, 2017."

And in the middle of all this, crooked lobbyist Harold Ford, a former congressman who was always known to be chasing women-- he lost his Senate race because of sexual charges-- got fired by Morgan Stanley for sexual misconduct. The company told HuffPo, which broke the story yesterday that Ford "has been terminated for conduct inconsistent with our values and in violation of our policies." He's also a paid regular on MSNBC's Morning Joe-- always ready to show Democrats can be as conservative as Republicans when it comes to anything fiscal-- and I can't imagine they'll keep him on either.

In two interviews with HuffPost, the woman alleged that Ford engaged in harassment, intimidation, and forcibly grabbed her one evening in Manhattan, leading her to seek aid from a building security guard. The incident took place several years ago when Ford and the woman were supposed to be meeting for professional reasons. Ford continued to contact her after the encounter until she wrote an email asking him to cease contact.

The email, which was reviewed by HuffPost, shows that the woman emailed Ford after he repeatedly asked her to drinks. She asked him not to contact her anymore, citing his inappropriate conduct the evening where he forcibly grabbed and harassed her.

Ford replied to the email by apologizing and agreeing not to contact her. “Hey very sorry. Meant no harm,” the email reads. “And I apologize for whatever I may have said or what was said. And my overtures are strictly professional. Again I apologize didn’t mean to be inappropriate at all. Sorry that impression was left.”

HuffPost is not identifying the woman at her request but has reviewed emails that confirm her interactions with Ford and spoke to two people whom the woman confided in about the incident. One woman heard from Ford’s accuser the night of the incident and described her as “distraught, shocked, and frightened,” and said that she was concerned about any career ramifications should she report the incident.

In a statement provided to HuffPost, Ford denied the allegations: “This simply did not happen. I have never forcibly grabbed any woman or man in my life. Having drinks and dinner for work is part of my job, and all of my outreach to the news reporter making these false allegations was professional and at the direction of my firm for business purposes. I support and have tremendous respect for the brave women now speaking out in this important national dialogue. False claims like this undermine the real silence breakers. I will now be bringing legal action against the reporter who has made these false claims about me as well as Morgan Stanley for improper termination.”

John Singer, Ford’s employment counsel with the firm Singer Deutsch LLP, said “Morgan Stanley has still not told Harold directly of his termination, and unlike every other circumstance I’ve been in the company has refused provide me with a reason.”

He added: “This all demonstrates how this was a matter of convenience during a hyper-sensitive time and not based on real facts.”

Ford comes from a prominent political family in Tennessee. His father, Harold Ford Sr., held a congressional seat for 12 terms before retiring, leaving his son to run for the seat, a race which he won handily. Ford served in the House for nearly 10 years before deciding to run for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Republican Bill Frist. Ford lost that hotly contested 2006 race by fewer than three points to current Republican Sen. Bob Corker.

Since leaving Congress in 2007, Ford has worked for two financial services companies, first for Merrill Lynch and then Morgan Stanley, which he joined in 2011 as a managing director.

At the time Morgan Stanley announced the hire, the New York Times described Ford’s role as a rainmaker of sorts: “Mr. Ford will be responsible for ‘building business opportunities’ for clients, Morgan Stanley said. He will manage relationships with corporate directors, senior executives and institutional investors, as well as private clients.”

Should Democrats Be Giving Thanks That Trump May Hire Harold Ford For Something?

Between 1869 and 1970, Tennessee only elected one Republican to the U.S. Senate. That Democratic dominance was flipped on it's head in more recent decades. The last Democrat elected to represent Tennessee in the Senate was Al Gore (1990). Today, every statewide official in Tennessee is a Republican, from the governor on down. The state House has 73 Republicans and 26 Democrats and the state Senate has 28 Republicans and just 5 Democrats. There are 9 congressional seats. Seven of them are so red that Democrats can't even beat a predator doctor with an "R" next to his name who drugs and rapes his female patients (Scott DesJarlais). In most of the districts, when Democrats do run, they don't even get a third of the vote. In 2012 Romney beat Obama 1,453,097 (59%) to 953,043 (39%). Obama won 4 of the state's 95 counties: Davidson (Nashville), Shelby (Memphis), Hayward and Hardeman. Trump did even better than Romney had, taking 1,517,402 votes (61.1%) to Clinton's 867,110 (34.9%). She won only 3 counties, missing Hardeman.

This is one politically-backward blood-red state. But there are 2 deep blue congressional districts, basically Nashville, which is represented by an old school reactionary Blue Dog, Jim Cooper, who's more like a Republican than a national Democrat, and Memphis. The Memphis district, TN-09, is around 65% African-American. A quirk of fate-- and a reaction against decades of brazen political corruption of the city's most prominent Democratic dynasty-- made a liberal Jewish state senator, Steve Cohen, congressman in 2006. He's a living refutation of the DCCC dictum that only identity politics and Republican-lite candidates should determine who runs for office in the South.

Cohen's predecessor was Harold Ford, Jr, who followed his father, Harold Ford, Sr. Their machine is a classic example of big city corruption and was, in fact, built directly onto the foundations of that of notoriously corrupt Democratic power-broker Edward Hull "Boss" Crump, one of the reasons Tennesseans gave up, en masse, on the Democratic Party. Crump had befriended Ford's grandfather and enabled his uncle, state Senator, John Ford, who was indicted on bribery, extortion and witness tampering charges and served 4 years in prison on the bribery charge. Harold Sr. served in Congress for 11 terms but was indicted for bank fraud in the middle of his career and was a bit of a pariah in Congress after that. The father became a lobbyist and his son seamlessly took over the House seat and the political machine.

Ford, who has failed the bar exam and is not licensed to practice law anywhere, was as corrupt as the rest of his family but always manages to worm out of his criminal and ethical troubles.

He joined the Blue Dogs and voted for every bad piece of right-wing legislation that came down the pike-- from enthusiastically backing bills to deregulate banks-- and to pass a predatory bankruptcy bill that was terrible for Memphis residents and, of course, to gut Glass-Steagall-- to Bush's push to invade Iraq. He was an obsessed homophobe, virulently anti-Choice and lectured liberal senators to filibuster Bush;'s far right Supreme Court nominees, who Ford thought were just dandy. His congressional career was notable for never being about his long-suffering constituents and always being about his own sordid career. He railed against progressives and progressive ideas and ran against Pelosi for Democratic leader, losing badly.

The Democratic establishment backed his Senate run in 2006, crippling the efforts of a more progressive state Senator who had a far better chance to win against Bob Corker. After he lost the Senate race he went to work for Fox News as the classic "Fox Democrat" and took a job as a golfed lobbyist and vice-chairman of Merrill-Lynch. Later he became a managing director at another crooked Wall Street firm, Morgan Stanley and became a regular on Morning Joe, playing his role as a make-believe Democrat, and threatening to run for various offices in New York and other northeastern states. He tamped down his ugly homophobia when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate in New York but was soon laughed out of the race.

Ford, more a TV personality than anything remotely useful to anyone but himself, is perfect for Trump. He's friends with Ivanka and Jared Kushner and with trusted Trump crony, Joe Scarborough. Tuesday the NY Times reported that Trump is considering him for Transportation Secretary. he certainly fits in with the criminal elements Trump has surrounded himself with.

Politically, Ford supports Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. His recent contributions have been to right-of-center Dems like Chris Matthews' lobbyist wife, Kathleen, Ro Khanna, Mary Landrieu, Bob Kerrey, Mark Warner, Mark Pryor... all the garbage candidates that have put the Democratic Party into a state of disrepute. The Democrat he was most often compared with when he was in office was Joe Lieberman. We started covering Ford at DWT in 2006-- please, help yourself to an extra serving of turkey.

Dancin' With Rahm And Cory-- Our New Guest Blogger Is No Fan Of The Third Way Politicians

Last week, Politico ran a story about Rahm Emanuel's narcisistic television show on CNN, Chicagoland. Hadas Gold's [no relation to Ari Gold] article accused Rahm and his team of colluding with CNN.

Gold asserted that Rahm and his staff would read over scripts, direct camera angles, and oversee music selection in order to yield an artistic result that painted the Mayor and his administration in a good light. So yes, while much of Chicago burned, Rahm was busy looking at himself on "Final Cut."

More than 700 emails show that the production team, led by executive producer Marc Levin, worked with the mayor's team to develop storylines, arrange specific scenes and review news releases for what was billed as an unscripted documentary series.

In one email asking for more access to Emanuel, Levin wrote they were seeking more time with the mayor not to show his weaknesses "but instead to show the best of who he is and what he is doing."

"I know we still have time to round out the Mayor's story and present him as the star he really is," Levin wrote.

Producers also asked Emanuel's team to set up certain interactions and sent the team CNN's news releases about the series for review before they went out.

In an interview with the Tribune, Levin acknowledged that to get any sort of access to the mayor, they had "to do a certain dance."

"Everything the mayor does is stage-managed. Everything. That is the way he operates, so I'm not going to dispute that," Levin said. "I would be the first to acknowledge that you don't get into Chicago… and get access without having to do a certain dance."

So why try to pass it off as "news?" Shouldn't it be on TMZ rather than CNN? Like a story about Aaron Schock's not being able to find a gal? In any case, no one can accuse Rahm and CNN of being the first to pull this.

During much of his administration, former Newark Mayor/now New Jersey Senator Cory Booker had a television show produced about himself--after he had a documentary produced about himself-- entitled Brick City. Like Rahm's Chicagoland, this series was meant to show Booker as a reformer; it was pure propaganda in the most classic form.

It sought to show Booker-- ironically with Rahm's current Police Director who then ran Newark's failed department-- fighting against gangs, drugs, and prostitution.

Yet, what Brick City did not show was Cory in New York City, Los Angeles, or on college campuses, where he was most of the time. Similarly, Chicagoland does not show Rahm on his monthly fundraising trips to Hollywood or on his monthly strategy sessions back in Washington DC.

So, the point then, of this post, is not to point out the similar narcisistic traits in both Rahm Emanuel and Cory Booker. No, it is to show the strategy used by Corporatist mayors and failed, "Third Way," Democratic Politicians.

These individuals have nothing going for them or their political careers. Not one ounce of a genuine cause occupies their bodies.

They use the banking money they raise to pay Hollywood directors to consult on camera angles and narratives. They are not one with the people, because they are never with the people. These individuals have to rely on Chicagoland, and Brick City, because the people in their city's know the truth, and the only way to silence the outcries is to go on national television saying otherwise.

Remember Third Way/Blue Dog Democrat Harold Ford Jr? After he failed and was booted from Tennessee, where did he go? Well, first, Merrill Lynch, and then, MSNBC. The voters did not relate to him, because who in the world-- or in Knoxville or Chattanooga-- would relate to a young, priveledged man who was funded by Wall Street while many homes were being foreclosed upon by the institutions that funded him?

These conservative shills are sell outs, and just as they deceive voters every four years they deceive themselves too, by convincing themselves that they have the talent to be national TV stars. It's rather pathetic, as both Newark and Chicago need something much bolder than a CNN original series.

Harold Ford And Rahm Emanuel On Chris Hayes' Show? Probably Not In This Lifetime

Who's ready for Sunday TV?

I'll guess most DWT readers don't sit around with bated breath hoping that John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman or Harold Ford shows up on their favorite Sunday morning talking heads show. Meet the Press used to be a big deal-- thirty or forty years ago. Since then it's gone seriously downhill and that downhill trend has accelerated markedly in the last decade, Meet The Press' McCain Decade. It's completely unwatchable now and Martha Roundtree and Lawrence Spivak would probably slit their wrists if they were to see it today. Or change the channel and watch Chris Hayes' early morning MSNBC show instead. Chris has, far and away, the most interesting and thought-provoking topics and guests anywhere on TV. (I would have said Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow but... Ed Rendell.)

I wouldn't expect trashy overexposed hacks like McCain, Lieberman, Graham, Ford or Rendell to ever be guests on Hayes' show. It's a different kind of show by a different kind of host. And no Rahm Emanuel either. In fact, some of the stuff in Chris' great new book, Twilight of the Elites might be taken personally by some of TV's most enduringly stale guests. In a discussion of the degeneration of American elites, he points out that "The 1 percent and the nation's governing class are more or less one and the same. If you are a member of the governing elite and you aren't a millionaire, you're doing something wrong. And if the divide between the 1 percent and the 99 percent really is a defining feature in our politics, how can the 99 percent trust that same wealthy, governing elite to zealously pursue its interests? [...] Societies whose upper class is marked by birth, title, and lineage do not tend to cultivate a voracious appetite for competition in the same way ours does. There is a certain security that comes from being at the top, but in a society of fractal inequality there in no top. There is always another height to which to ascend, more competitors to vanquish, more money to obtain. Which is why our elites display a destructive and combustible combination of egomania and entitlement on the one hand and insecurity on the other."

And, no, Hayes wasn't specifically explaining why Romney is running for president or what makes him tick. In fact, let's get back to why the Meet the Press type hacks are unlikely to ever show up on Hayes' TV show... or, in all likelihood, any TV show that Hayes ever hosts in the future. He has just pointed out that "more than one-third of congressional staffers turn to a career in lobbying after leaving Capitol Hill." This is one of the more egregious sources of corruption in the world's most corrupt city.

Moving from Capitol Hill to K Street isn't limited to staffers. In 2010, 37 percent of the newly out-of-office members of Congress went to work for lobbying firms or clients. After losing his run for Senate in 2006, Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford, Jr. moved to New York to take a job with Merrill Lynch with a guaranteed annual compensation of $2 million. At the time he had no experience in finance. What he was paid for was his networks: "A telegenic young lawmaker with a wide network of relationships around the country, Mr. Ford was courted by several Wall Street firms after he lost his bid for the Senate in Tennessee four years ago," noted the Times. When Peter Orszag, the forty-two-year-old director of the Office of Management and Budget for the first two years of the Obama administration, resigned his post in July 2010, he quickly announced he'd be joining Citigroup as a vice chairman for a salary that Wall Street insiders estimated was between $2 million and $3 million.

...Once a member of the elite has sufficiently monetized his or her power, that money can be traded for other kinds of power, which in turn can be invested and reap its own kinds of rewards. Harold Ford Jr.'s political and media networks made him an attractive hire for Citigroup, where he was, in turn, able to expand both his Rolodex and his earning potential. As this positive feedback loop plays out, the elite increasingly becomes an entirely distinct group, more effortlessly between public and private life, alternating between access to state power and market power.

As a snapshot of what this looks like in practice, consider the routine staffing changes in the Obama administration as it reached the midway point in its first term. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel left his position to run for Mayor of Chicago. Emanuel got his start as a fundraiser for Mayor Daley, moved to the Clinton White House, where he lasted nearly the entire eight years, eventually becoming a senior advisor to the President. After serving in the Clinton administration, at the age of thirty-nine he left to become an investment banker, spending two and a half years at Wasserstein Perella, where he amassed a fortune of more than $18 million. He then ran for Congress, became White House Chief of Staff, and left to run successfully for mayor of Chicago.

To replace the multimillionaire Rahm Emanuel, the multimillionaire President Obama (net worth $5 million) named multimillionaire William Daley, the brother of the mayor that Emanuel was hoping to replace. Daley's résumé included stints as Commerce Secretary in the Clinton administration and as campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign, but at the time he was named chief of staff, he was Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase, making $8.7 million a year. His net worth was estimated at more than $50 million. When Bill Daley later left his post as chief of staff in January 2012, he was replaced by Jack Lew, who spent four years at Citigroup and received a bonus of $950,000 in 2009, even after it was disclosed that his division made high-stakes bets on the housing market.

So... if you do want to see these disreputable corrupt/corrupting characters on your TV screen, just stick with Meet The Press. Hayes' show is entirely in a different dimension.

If The Democratic Party Is Dying In Parts of The Country, Don't Blame Mark Clayton, Blame Steve Israel And The Beltway Insiders

The last time, which was also the first time he won, Bob Corker ran to represent Tennessee in the U.S. Senate, his Democratic opponent was notorious corporate shill and faux-Democrat Harold Ford, Jr. Nationally, 2006 was a very Democratic year. The 55 seat Republican majority disappeared and Miss McConnell stepped down to the Minority Leader slot. Not a single Senate seat held by the Democrats fell to a Republican and Democratic candidates defeated 6 Republican incumbents: Rick Santorum (PA), Mike DeWine (OH), Lincoln Chafee (RI), Jim Talent (MO), Conrad Burns (MT) and George Allen (VA). The Democrats held onto their two open seats (Minnesota and Maryland) and the one Republican open seat, Tennessee... was the only good news the GOP had that night. Bill Frist had decided to retire-- either, people speculated, to run for president or to fight against fraud charges against his shady chain of felonious hospitals-- and, on paper, it looked like it could be a Democratic pickup. There were more registered Democrats in Tennessee than Republicans and most of the state's congressmen were Democrats. Corker, mayor of Chattanooga, spent $18,622,928 and Ford, then the congressman from Memphis, and both a Blue Dog and a New Dem, spent $15,299,955.

Ford, the youngest Member of Congress when he was elected, quickly acquired an absolutely atrocious voting record-- backing the bankster's in their successful effort to repeal Glass-Steagall, joining the minority of Democrats who backed the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush, voting for Bush's virulently anti-family bankruptcy bill, joining the GOP in their insane push to interfere with the Terri Schiavo case, proudly defined himself as an anti-Choice Democrat and ran against then-Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi who he attacked as being too liberal. He lost his Senate race, but with a strong 48% of the vote (859,976 votes against Corker's 929,911). On the same day, Democrat Phil Bredesen was reelected governor with 69% (1,245,992 votes).

Fast-forward one Senate term (6 years) and Corker is up for reelection. The Tennessee Democratic party, at least statewide, is moribund. It survives in Memphis and Nashville, but it's pretty much dead or on life-support in the rest of the state. In that 2006 election Democratic House incumbents were all reelected with massive margins:

Lincoln Davis- 66%
Jim Cooper- 69%
Bart Gordon- 67%
John Tanner- 73%

And Ford's replacement, Steve Cohen, won with 60%-- despite a challenge from Ford's brother Jake who was supported by Memphis' Black Ministers Association and the Ford Machine. In the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010, Tennessee's 5 Democratic congressmen was reduced to two. Lincoln Davis was slaughtered 39-57% and Gordon and Tanner both chose to retire rather than face sure defeat. Both seats fell to the GOP by very wide margins. But last week, the death throes of a once proud party actually got worse, much worse, as Mark Clayton, a right-wing vice president of the kind of a hate group normally associated with Republicans, won the Democratic primary to face Corker. The state party has since disavowed him and urged Democrats to write in someone else-- anyone else.

The party said Friday that it would do nothing to help Mark Clayton, 35, who received nearly twice as many votes as his closest challenger in Thursday’s seven-candidate primary, winning the right to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Corker in November.

"The only time that Clayton has voted in a Democratic primary was when he was voting for himself,” the party said in a news release. “Many Democrats in Tennessee knew nothing about any of the candidates in the race, so they voted for the person at the top of the ticket. Unfortunately, none of the other Democratic candidates were able to run the race needed to gain statewide visibility or support.

“Mark Clayton is associated with a known hate group in Washington, D.C., and the Tennessee Democratic Party disavows his candidacy, will not do anything to promote or support him in any way, and urges Democrats to write-in a candidate of their choice in November.”

Clayton defended his work for Public Advocate of the United States, the pro-life, pro-marriage group in question, and said he was disappointed with the Tennessee Democratic Party’s “zero-sum politics.”

“It’s not necessarily surprising, unfortunately,” he said in a phone interview. “But that’s not the way I deal with my political opponents. I have good friends who are liberals.”

Clayton acknowledged his social conservative instincts but said he’d been deeply disappointed by the presidency of George W. Bush, the last Republican to occupy the White House.

Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Chris Devaney gloated on Twitter about the opposition party’s failure to find a suitable candidate.

“Nice vetting job by the Dems,” Devaney wrote.

The reaction wasn’t any more sympathetic in some Democratic quarters.

“What a debacle in Tennessee,” the liberal Daily Kos website wrote Friday morning, hours before the party announced its decision. “It's not like Democrats were ever going to have a shot at unseating freshman Sen. Bob Corker, but at least our preferred candidate, actress and activist Park Overall, is a real Democrat. The guy Dems did nominate seems to be anything but.”

...The Clayton campaign’s Facebook page champions three major positions: strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution, family stances that are pro-life, and keeping the country from turning into “AN ORWELLIAN SUPER STATE.”

Sean Braisted, a Democratic Party spokesman, left the door open for a possible legal maneuver to try to get Clayton’s name off the Democratic line of the November ballot.

“The only option we are taking off the table in this situation,” he said, “is supporting Mark Clayton.”

Unfortunately, this isn't the only case of some crazy freak winning the Democratic Party nomination. Kesha Rogers, a LaRouche candidate in Texas won the Democratic nomination in the 22nd CD south of Houston, not just this year, but in 2010 as well (when she garnered no support from the Texas Democratic Party and under 30% of the November vote). She's calling for the impeachment of President Obama. And on Tuesday, another LaRouche crackpot, Bill Roberts, is trying to win the Democratic nomination in Michigan's 11th CD, where there's an actual chance for a Democratic victory in November. That's because the GOP incumbent, Thaddeus McCotter, abruptly resigned when he was caught up in an electoral fraud scandal. Like Rogers, Roberts is running on a platform of impeaching President Obama... and all the rest of the LaRouche claptrap.

Fortunately, Michigan does have a lively and active Democratic party and a viable progressive candidate running for the 11th CD nomination, Dr. Syed Taj. Like I said, this Tuesday is primary day and it looks like Dr. Taj will defeat the LaRouchie. He feels pretty confident as well, although his campaign is working as though he were running against a real opponent instead of a crackpot. Here's what he had to say about the state of this race this week:

“I am proud to be the real Democrat running to serve the 11th District. And the response we have received from the people of the 11th district has been overwhelmingly positive. In the past few months my campaign has made close to 190,000 direct voter contacts. With the help of over 125 volunteers we have shared our enthusiastic message about my plans to invest in job creation, strengthen and protect Social Security and Medicare, enhance benefits for our veterans, and conserve our environment while promoting energy independence.

“In addition to talking with so many of my friends and neighbors, I have also been proud to earn the support of numerous organizations and elected officials that represent and serve many of my fellow Michiganders. Our campaign has secured the support of the entire Michigan Democratic Congressional Delegation and Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN). We are proud to have the support of our friends in labor including the Michigan AFL-CIO, UAW Region 1 CAP, UAW Region 1-A CAP, the Michigan Nurses Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and Sheet Metal Workers Local 80. I am also proud to be endorsed by NOW-PAC and the Sierra Club.

“Further, the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, and Observer and Eccentric Newspapers have all endorsed my campaign as it is clear my proven track record of success and vision for the future are what’s need in Congress.

"Across the district we have heard that people are ready for reasoned and resolute representation and I look forward to carrying our positive campaign forward through the primary and unto November. These past few months have proven that the people of the 11th District deserve better representation in Washington, D.C. and my experience as an elected official, practicing physician, and chief of medicine are the right prescription for the 11th District.”

 
Back in June we asked physicians like Dr. Taj, who are running for Congress to help us understand how to improve on the Affordable Care Act. Dr. Taj's spectacular answers helped persuade us to endorse him and he'll be joining us for a live chat at Crooks and Liars in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, you can contribute to his campaign here. Here's what he told me on the day the Supreme Court declared the Affordable Care Act constitutional:

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act and the individual mandate means that those of us that support reform of our health care system must now act to build on what has been done and improve it. For one, health care costs are a major contributor to the federal deficit that must be reigned in if we’re to put our nation on a stable fiscal foundation. The individual mandate is the centerpiece of the ACA and projected cost reductions would have been impossible without a larger insurance pool. It would have meant increasingly less take-home pay for middle class families to pay for the same or worse coverage. There's a lot we must do to improve the legislation.

The decision gives us the opportunity to keep reforming and designing a better system. Polls have shown widespread public support for a universal health care system and this is the window of opportunity for our leaders to act. A recent report by economist Gerald Friedman shows that this would “save as much as $570 billion now wasted on administrative overhead and monopoly profits.” While there are costs involved with insuring millions of uninsured and underinsured we’d save much more by eliminating middlemen and simplifying the system as a whole, especially by eliminating the incentive to deny care for larger profits. Even with its virtues, the ACA doesn't do nearly enough to bring down long-term costs or correct the deeply rooted problems of our health care system.

So is the DCCC on the case? Of course not. They are busy in Tennessee though, where they're spending money donated by Democratic donors-- who are largely pro-Choice-- on a hopeless campaign by state Senator Eric Stewart, an anti-Choice fanatic, to win back the 4th CD, the one Lincoln Davis lost to Scott DesJarlais in 2010. At the time, Davis, like Stewart a conservaDem, got 70,254 votes (39%) to DesJarlais' 103,969 (57%). Quite the reversal from the cycle before when Davis took 146,776 votes (59%) against his Republican challenger's 94,447 (38%), though it wasn't because he rode to victory on Obama's coattails. That year McCain handily defeated Obama in the 4th CD, 64-34%. And it's not like redistricting is going to help the Democrats' cause in the 4th. Under the new boundaries, McCain would have still won, but with 63% instead of 64%. So what is the DCCC looking at when they decide to back someone like Stewart in a district like TN-04? They always swear it's just about the numbers. But the numbers show an impossible situation-- completely unwinnable. And the money-- the other top factor for the DCCC... well, DesJarlais has raised $906,849 and has $591,976 on hand. Stewart has raised $367,382 (much of it with the help of the DCCC) and has a meager $152,712 on hand. Just for comparison's sake, the ad campaign the DCCC just ran for Stewart (below) and a couple dozen other mostly conservative candidates did not include any progressives and certainly didn't include Dr. Taj, yet MI-11 was won by President Obama (54-45% under the old lines, 50-48% under the new lines. And while the DCCC was helping Stewart raise $367,382, Dr. Taj raised $338,021 and isn't facing an incumbent and out-raised each of the Republican candidates trying to get their party's nomination. So what are Steve Israel and the DCCC really looking at when they make these lame decisions? Just that Stewart is an anti-Choice conservative and that Dr, Taj dares to cherish the ideals and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and that he vows to protect Women's Choice?

Now that we know Harold Ford pays sales tax, have I ever told you the story of the Hotel Tax Lady in San Francisco?

by Ken

I'm still chuckling over the update Howie added to his post earlier today on our senator-to-be (if Wall Street has its way, apparently), Harold Ford Jr., and his unexpected link to the ghost of onetime NYC Comptroller Mario "The Hanging Judge" Procaccino.

Heck, it was a kick just to see the old thug's name again after all these years. He was a character, was our Mario, though I'm not sure he was really as close as Richard Reeves is quoted as believing he was to being elected mayor in 1969, when John Lindsay was standing for reelection.

This is embarrassing, coming as it does just days after I myself paid tribute to Reeves. I just question one of his premises here. He called Procaccino's "the worst political campaign in American history," and charged the judge with "snatch[ing] defeat from the jaws of victory." Now it's certainly true that in the 1969 mayoral race, with New York City's limited Republican voter base split between conservative State Sen. John Marchi, the official Republican candidate, and maverick Republican Lindsay running on the Liberal line, pretty much any Democrat should have been able to walk right on through the goal posts. The thing is, our Mario wasn't "any" Democrat. He was a hack who had no reason to exist except for his famous tough-on-crime "law 'n' order" posture. So yeah, he ran a feeble campaign, but that campaign was who he was. What else did he have to run on?

But I digress. Howie's point was that it was Judge Mario who, during that race, coined the phrase "limousine liberals" to cover people like the hated John Lindsay, and now, all these decades letter, the phrase is available to cover Senator-to-be Ford, who dumped his home state of Tennessee after the voters there dumped him, and moved to New York to lead the lifestyle of the rich and famous. In my own mind, I keep doubting that he'll make the Senate run because I don't think he's willing to take the pay cut.

Howie's new point about our Harold is that he appears to be using his old home state as a tax haven, paying its lower income tax rates instead of the higher ones of the state he's contemplating representing in the U.S. Senate. And then some defender or defenders of Harold's piped in to say that it's a cruel calumny to accuse him of not paying taxes in New York. Why, he pays sales tax! This is so pathetic that I think we really need more information about who actually thought this was an answer. Sales tax???

But now that we've descended to this level of preposterousness, I'm wondering, did I ever tell you my story about the infamous Hotel Tax Lady?

It all happened in 1985, when the San Francisco Opera was undertaking a staging of Wagner's Ring cycle, something that back then represented quite a substantial financial gamble, considering the staggering cost involved and the uncertain prospect for ticket sales. The ever-alert weasels of the Music Critics Association sensed an opportunity here, knowing that San Francisco's Ring could be a great draw for the association's annual meeting, since the prospect of free tickets to the event around which the meeting is organized is normally part of the deal. (Heck, it got me there.) Provided, of course, they could get Terry McEwen, who was running the San Francisco Opera then, to cough up the necessary tickets.

It probably killed Terry. Why, he as much as told us so himself in his "welcoming" speech. He was one of the better-known figures in the American classical music business, and he already had a lifetime dislike of critics from his years as manager of the classical division of Decca Records' U.S. company, London Records. And in his charming, chuckling way, he expressed pretty open regret that he had committed himself to giving away all those Ring tickets. He'd agreed, he explained, back when he was losing sleep over whether he'd be able to sell enough Ring tickets to avoid financial disaster. In the interim he'd discovered that the demand for tickets was enormous. He could have sold as many tickets as he had available, and here he'd gone and given all those freebies -- to critics!

It so happened that at that year's meeting there was a working session devoted to ethics. "So happened" indeed -- there's always a session on ethics. For people who don't have any, it's amazing how much they like to talk about them. You don't suppose they think it's the same thing, do you?

One obvious topic of discussion was the ethics of all of us accepting all those free tickets from the San Francisco Opera and then turning around and reviewing the show. Or even not reviewing it -- just the general propriety of taking free stuff. It's a perennial issue, because it can't be solved. Only the really rich people who could afford to buy all their tickets and records and books and whatever would be available to review stuff if reviewers were to pay for all that stuff. But that means, inescapably, that in some measure you become part of the publicity machine. As I say, it's a perennial problem, and the only solution I see, which isn't even a solution, is just to be aware of it. Like I said, it doesn't solve anything; I just feel better about the critics who at least remain aware of the conflict.

Of course at these sessions there will always be people who stand up and righteously insist that they're not affected by the gift, no sir! As if the very act of making that indignant denial isn't part of the effect that taking the gifts has. (These would be the people I'm least inclined to trust.) But the Hotel Tax Lady came at the problem from an angle of her own, God bless her.

You have to follow her chain of reasoning carefully. It rested on a series of premises.

(1) The city of San Francisco was kicking in a certain amount of subsidy to the Opera to help mount the Ring production. (True.)

(2) The city of San Francisco, pressed for revenue, had instituted a tax on all hotel stays, a hotel tax. (True.)

(3) We're all staying in hotels, right? (Not entirely true, but close enough.)

(4) And so we're paying the hotel tax, right? (Um, with the above stipulation, but, uh . . .)

(5) And so our tax money is going to the San Francisco Opera, and we've really paid for our tickets!

[In the absence of a rimshot, let's take a dramatic pause to let this sink in.]

I learned something that day. Where there's a will to obfuscate, obfuscation probably isn't far behind.

After all, Senator Ford pays sales tax.

#

Harold Ford Jr. And Mario Procaccino-- Conservative Democrats Among Life's Losers

Do all conservatives have black hearts?

Harold Ford and I have something in common. Neither of us pays taxes in New York, although I used to (when I lived there); he never did-- and he lives there now. I pay my taxes in California, where the top bracket rate is 10.55%. The top rate in New York is 8.97%, so I'm not exactly saving any money by paying taxes here. Ford, on the other hand, saves quite a bit by filing in Tennessee, where the rate is only 6%. He's being squirrely about how much he actually makes as Vice-Chairman of Merrill Lynch (he refuses to divulge how much his tax-payer-funded bonuses were). But his base pay was a million dollars so... state tax in Tennessee was $60,000, instead of the $89,700 he would have paid in NYC (not counting the bonus which is rumored to be far more than a million dollars). Ford has been lying to the public about everything, so it should have surprised no one to learn his lies about paying taxes in New York were just that.

If you're wondering how a homophobic, anti-Choice, conservative loser from Tennessee wound up in New York Democratic politics... well, Wall Street has always loved him and they singled him out for special treatment long ago-- just the way they did with virulently pro-Wall Street patsies Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Mike Castle (R-DE), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Rick Lazio (R-NY) and Paul Ryan (R-WI). They've lavished millions of dollars on each of them, helping them build political power in the hopes, that one day they will be in a position to influence policies that make Wall Street even more powerful than it already is.

In the history of the House of Representatives, the only non-Senators who have gotten more in legal contributions from the Finance Sector than Ford ($3,682,599) were Rick Lazio ($6,424,123), who, like Ford and Emanuel, used the Wall Street revolving door to personally enrich himself; Minority Leader Dick Gephardt ($5,094,782); Ways & Means Chairman Charlie Rangel ($4,602,317); and ex-Chairman of the Banking Oversight Committee and notorious inside trader Spencer Bachus ($4,107,424). Yes, even more than they've given to their most dependable puppets like Eric Cantor, Denny Hastert, Paul Kanjorski, John Boehner, Pete Sessions, Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling!

Ford had, by then, settled down in New York with his new wife, Emily Threlkeld, a fashion industry executive whose stepfather, Anson Beard, is a legendary Wall Street figure. And around that same time, with Hillary Clinton running for president and an open seat in his adopted hometown likely to open up, people around Ford began pondering an audacious New York run.

Back in 2008, Threlkeld mentioned to a friend that Ford was considering making the race, the friend said. Gov. David Paterson’s choice of Gillibrand, a little-known upstate congressman, to fill Clinton’s seat after she resigned to become secretary of state, fueled the interest.

Ford started hearing about it at cocktail parties: Influential figures like fundraisers Steve Rattner and Maureen White, who had long had a rocky relationship with Gillibrand, were urging him to run. He seemed, said one member of that scene who talked to him about the Senate, like he was “bored” with his banking job and ready for a new challenge.

Ford fills the sort of hazy role at Merrill traditionally occupied by political stars at New York investment firms. They’re rainmakers and image buffers, there to impress clients, make connections and put a politic foot forward in public settings.

But Ford arrived at the tail of the boom and stayed at Merrill through its absorption by Bank of America and through a controversial round of bonuses at the end of 2008. His spokesman, Davidson Goldin, declined to say whether he’d received one, but New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has requested information on the bonuses from the bank, which received federal support to weather the crisis.

What brought Ford to mind this weekend wasn't his appearance on Meet The Press but some research into another extremely conservative high-profile New York politician-- but from my childhood. In high school, Ken and I used to love making fun of a clueless Bronx political hack, Judge Mario Procaccino, who ran what journalist Richard Reeves termed "the worst political campaign in American history." At one point it looked like his mean-spirited conservatism would beat out Mayor John Lindsay's liberal Republicanism, but Procaccino was so inept that he actually addressed (uncomfortably) an African-American gathering and assured them that "My heart is as black as yours." Probably just as black as Harold Ford's, but Ford was just born a few months after Procaccino sealed his fate and got dumped onto the rubbish pile of history.

Procaccino died in 1995, long forgotten by the world of politics (outside Ken and me), but he left behind one tiny little bit of trivia as his political legacy, and this legacy is what-- even more than their shared conservatism-- is what ties him to Harold Ford. Procaccino invented the term "limousine liberal" in his campaign against Lindsay. Unless you want to call Ford a "helicopter conservative," much of what the judge had to say about Lindsay well describes Ford. His tirade against Lindsay was that his supporters were the types who "live in penthouses and who send their children to private schools and who have doormen and who don't ride the subways." (Let me assure you that neither Ken nor I had ever been in a penthouse. Nor did we know anyone who went to private school-- except for some Italians in the neighborhood who went to parochial school-- nor did either of us have a doorman. And when we could scrounge up the 15 cents for a token, we loved to ride the subway.) Like the vast majority of people who live in a world of limousines and penthouses and doormen, Ford is a conservative, and, like most of them, a tax cheat.

UPDATE: Sales Tax

Ford defenders lamely posit he wasn't lying when he claimed that he pays taxes in New York because he does pay sales taxes! Does that mean some Chinese Communist functionary stationed in NY, the way Ford is, who buys melamine-free milk at the corner grocery and pays sales tax is also entitled to run for the Senate seat? Or how about the 45 million tourists who visit New York annually and buy something and pay sales tax? Are they all entitled to run for the U.S. Senate?

Harold Ford Would Be Even Worse For New York Than An Actual Republican

Saturday's my birthday. I was born in New York City but I've now lived in California longer than I did in New York. Doesn't matter; I'll always been from NY. When I was 21 I spent a winter in a tiny hamlet in the Hindu Kush where no one spoke Farsi, let alone English. In fact no one had ever heard of the United States or experienced electricity. When I got back to Kabul in the spring my friends all noticed that my Brooklyn accent was as strong as ever-- although my Pashto was almost passable. I don't remember 10 words of Pashto (or Farsi/Dari) but my Brooklyn accent... I could still be living on East 17th Street between O and P, around the corner from Dubrow's or in Atlantic Towers on Homecrest Avenue just beyond Avenue Z. There's about as much a chance that someone would mistake me from an Afghan as for a Californian.

Soon after I first got to San Francisco a Sufi connection from the meditation center I worked at in Amsterdam got me a job at a p.r. firm off Union Square. One day I picked up the phone and there was a distressed, actually hysterical, woman on the line, a friend, she said, of my boss, and she was threatening to jump out of a window. I went into red alert mode and interrupted my boss, who calmly told me to put her on hold and get back to work. How inhuman, I thought. I went back to the damsel in distress and talked her off the ledge-- a proverbial one, it turned out, more or less. It was the beginning of a close friendship, which ended a few years ago when she was brutally murdered. Her father had been a notorious Mafia don; he had been brutally murdered too-- before I met her. He left her a lot of money; she was my first wealthy friend. I used to stay at her mansion in Pacific Heights and when I went to New York City I stayed in her snazzy apartment on Sutton Place, a part of New York I had heard of but never been too. It wasn't for people from Brooklyn.

Sutton Place gave me the creeps. It didn't smell like the NYC I knew. It smelled... like money; it smelled Republican. Oh, yes, there are Republicans in NYC. I once read a report on George W. Bush political donations by zip code. The biggest donor zip codes for his campaign where from Manhattan-- Sutton Place included. The Republicans in NYC hardly run for office anymore-- or if they do, it's as part of a freakshow like Giuliani or Bloomberg. If you hear about a Republican elected official in NYC, it's probably someone from Staten Island or maybe a sociopath from Queens. But the big Republican money in New York City doesn't go to waste. It goes to the state-- well that has been a waste-- and national parties and their candidates. But it also goes towards making the Democratic Party more.... well, more Republican.

It's not a coincidence that much of the power inside the Democratic Establishment is conservative power-- especially when it comes to financial matters. Wall Street wealth searches out amenable (i.e., easily corruptible if not ideologically predisposed) Democrats to nurture. That is certainly why Rahm Emanuel wound up in the House leadership after one term and why he's now the White House Chief-of-Staff. And it also goes a long way towards explaining Harold Ford's bid for a New York Senate seat.

Ford's Memphis House seat was part of the family business he inherited from his father, Harold Ford, Sr. The family's political shenanigans are a caricature of the kind of political corruption that preys on inner city populations. In the House Ford was the most conservative Democrat representing a major urban area in the country. And one of the most corrupt. To this day, when you look up who the Financial Sector has most favored, Harold Ford, Jr is still up near the top. In the entire history of the U.S. House of Representatives the only congressional criminals who have managed to rake in more than the $3,682,599 Big Finance gave Ford, are senators plus 4 members of the House expressly working on Wall Street-- ex-Chairman of the House Banking Subcommittee on Housing Rick Lazio, who went on to "work" as an executive vice president of JPMorgan Chase (R-NY- $6,424,123), ex-Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO- $5,094,782), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Charlie Rangel ($4,602,317) and Ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee (and notorious insider-stock trader), Spencer Bachus (R-AL- $4,107,424. That's right, Big Finance has given more to their boy Ford than they have to their biggest and most corrupt GOP bets, Eric Cantor ($3,677,585), John Boehner ($3,369,029), Roy Blunt ($3,080,155), Pete Sessions ($2,929,240), Mark Kirk ($2,879,320), Bill McCollum ($2,722,300), Mike Castle ($2,684,612), Jeb Hensarling ($2,440,100), Tom DeLay ($2,261,566), David Dreier ($2,199,788) and Paul Ryan ($1,726,095).

Earlier today Maureen Dowd did a Times column about Ford's possible run in New York. She termed him "the darling of what he calls the 'Manhattan social philanthropic crowd.'” Not what you would have found around Dubrow's or Sheepshead Bay or at James Madison High School, where Ken and I were students, along with Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, and, a few years earlier, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She describes Ford as a "Merrill Lynch rainmaker," a nice way of saying he used his influence to suck taxpayer dollars from our pockets and put it into the pockets of Wall Street fatcats-- like himself. He's currently a Vice-Chairman of Bank of America in charge of stealing taxpayer money.

[H]e gets pedicures and has breakfast at the Regency on Park Avenue (where Rielle Hunter famously picked up John Edwards by calling him “so hot”). He often gets chauffeured by MSNBC to his gigs on Morning Joe and has flown to the boroughs in a helicopter... There are top Democrats who find Ford too slick. “He could sell a snowball in a blizzard,” said one... Being a Wall Street bonus baby is not a plus. “I’m not running from the fact that I worked at a bank and brought in clients,” he said. “Am I proud of everything that went on? Of course not.”

He didn't give back the millions of dollars he's pocketed though-- so I guess he isn't that not proud. Ford is the living, breathing definition of the words "self-serving" and "sleazy," a stereotype of the very worst politics can throw up.

In 2006 the Blue America PAC enthusiastically endorsed Kirsten Gillibrand for her first-- and successful-- run for Congress. One fourth of all the money she raised online came from 584 Blue America donors. We didn't endorse her again in 2008 because she had joined the Blue Dog caucus and I was disappointed when she was appointed to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. That said, she has been a decent senator (with a ProgressivePunch score of 97.90, not quite as good as Sherrod Brown's 99.32 or Sheldon Whitehouse's 98.64, but slightly better than Al Franken's 97.84 and Bernie Sanders' 96.99) and even as a Blue Dog was never a gratuitously conservative a-hole like Ford.

With solid progressive Jonathan Tasini as her only opponent in the primary, Blue America pretty much decided to steer clear of endorsing her-- and even considered endorsing Tasini. But then Wall Street's candidate stepped in and now we're wondering about this race again. Suggestions are welcome.

Joe Lieberman Double Crossed Reid Over Healthcare-- What Was Emanuel's Role?

Two shills of the Medical Industrial Complex

Harry Reid says Lieberman-- who he may finally realize is a Republican plant in his caucus-- "double-crossed me." What Reid still doesn't realize is that Rahm Emanuel was probably in on it. Reid's instinct was to stand up to Lieberman and his GOP cronies and let them filibuster. "Let's not do what he wants. Let the bill just go down," he said. And along came Rahm. The sleazy Wall Street operator "arrived at Reid’s office not long afterward-- casually dressed, a cup of coffee in one hand-- and after a brisk meeting, a decision was reached: Reid would abandon his compromise, which was intended to appease proponents of a government-run insurance plan."

The concession would not sit well with a lot of Democrats, not to mention the powerful constituency of union voters in Nevada, where Reid is up for re-election in November. But there was little discussion. Reid and Emanuel are exemplars of the just-get-it-done style of legislating. As it turned dark outside, Reid began pulling senators aside in the lobby just off the Senate floor, speaking in a strained whisper as he presented the case in characteristically pragmatic terms. “I’m with you; I’m for you,” he told Tom Harkin of Iowa, one of the Senate’s traditional New Deal Democrats, who was pained that the public option was dying.

“Harry has a very good way of sort of bringing you back to reality,” Harkin told me a few days later, “this wonderful way of shrugging his shoulders and saying: ‘If you can get Lieberman to vote with you, fine. Otherwise, chalk it up and move on.’ He calmed me down.”

What more has to happen for Lieberman to be kicked out of the Democratic caucus? Connecticut Democrats denied him renomination as their Senate candidate because of his conservative stance on issue after issue. He then ran against the Democratic nominee with the assistance of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and the Republican Party. Last year he actively campaigned against Obama and Democrats running for Congress. He voted for McCain and betrayed Rove over the McCain vice president pick. This year, after Obama and Reid brought him back into the fold he proved that everyone who ever said "he's with us on everything but the war" was proven untruthful or naive as Lieberman turned out to be against them on everything but the war! Last week he and McCain were in Israel undermining Obama's foreign policy.

By double-crossing Reid, he wrecked the healthcare reform legislation and drove a potentially deadly wedge between Obama and the Democratic Party grassroots. He may even wind up costing Reid his Senate seat. When will they learn? Anyone want to guess?


UPDATE: On The Other Hand...

If Lieberman is your kind of Democrat and if you live in New York, do I have someone here you are going to absolutely fall in love with. Here's a younger and more reactionary version of Joe Lieberman:

Harold Ford Starts His Campaign With A Long List Of Easily Refutable Lies

Lieberman-like conservative Harold Ford

How long will Democratic campaign operative Joe Trippi be able to ride on the goodwill progressives feel for Howard Dean's? He starts his boneheaded post on why New Yorkers need a Harold Ford candidacy with "As the campaign manager for Howard Dean..." Give me a break!

He says he thinks "it's important to have independent voices in the Democratic Party," which means Harold Ford should run. In what way is one of the worst corporate shills and Wall Street patsies in the Democratic Party "an independent voice?" Jonathan Tasini, who is also running for that Senate seat, is an independent voice. Harold Ford, president of the DLC, is a Republican voice in the Democratic Party.

"Primaries," posits Trippi, "allow for real debate about issues, new solutions and new ideas, and they allow for the challenging of stale thinking that often takes hold in a party’s establishment." I agree 100%. But what does that have, by any stretch of the imagination with Harold Ford? Even where he has been at odds with the Democratic establishment-- he's anti-gay, anti-choice, pro-war, pro-torture and generally adamantly opposed to efforts that favor working families over our corporate overlords-- he's trying to curry favor with New York State Democrats by noisily doing about-faces on all those issues. His old positions were all well and good for Tennessee, where those attitudes get quite a bit of truck, but in New York... Ford has been busy re-writing history to paint himself as pro-choice and pro-gay. Unfortunately for him, his career long voting record is widely available.

Harold Ford is an independent voice in the Democratic Party the same way-- the exact same way-- Joe Lieberman is an independent voice in the Democratic Party: no way at all. If Harold Ford was white, he would have left the Democratic Party along with the rest of the reactionary Democrats who joined the GOP in the last few decades. He didn't have that option. His OpEd in yesterday's NY Post is filled with delusion. He claims people are falsifying his record. Here's his record, and here and here or is the congressional record false?

"New Yorkers deserve a free election," he asserts oh so boldly. No wonder Tennessee is so happy to not have to worry about this weasel ever coming back to plague them again!

I am pro-choice-- have always been since I entered politics almost 15 years ago. My cumulative grade with NARAL during 10 years in Congress was right at 80 percent. Any assertions to the contrary are false.

Ford has always been known as a liar. He's still a liar. NARAL doesn't even issue cumulative voting record scores. And yesterday they took issue with Ford's bullshit; Nancy Keenan, their president:

"Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. today claimed that he is pro-choice and has a cumulative record of voting with NARAL Pro-Choice America 80 percent of the time during his tenure in Congress. NARAL Pro-Choice America tracks every choice-related vote in Congress, but we don't issue cumulative percentages of lawmakers' voting records. What's clear is that Mr. Ford did not have a consistently pro-choice record during his decade in Congress. On some of the most difficult reproductive-rights issues, such as the Bush Federal Abortion Ban and the anti-choice Child Custody Protection Act, Rep. Ford cast anti-choice votes.

"In March 2009, NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC endorsed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for election to U.S. Senate in 2010.  As a member of the House and now a member of the Senate, Sen. Gillibrand has compiled a fully pro-choice voting record. We are proud to support Sen. Gillibrand's campaign and will continue to do so regardless of who considers a primary challenge to her."

Media Matters also noticed a pattern of false assertions littering Ford's pathetically deceptive OpEd-- and, as they routinely do, rebutted lie after lie, primarily by quoting Ford. For example: "No, No. I was not pro-choice at one time, we don't have votes like that in the Congress... I'm pro-life, I'm pro-life Tucker. So I mean, I don't run from that." He sure is now. We'll let you know as soon as Trippi is officially on the payroll. Meanwhile Ford is building his brand all over the media, even beyond the confines of his boosters at Morning Joe. His NY Times interview last night seemed, if only inadvertently, to emphasize that he is as far from being "one of us" as if he was from Saturn instead of Tennessee. The vice chairman of Merrill Lynch/Bank of America lives in a very different NY than the one I was born and raised in.

On many days, he is driven to an NBC television studio in a chauffeured car. He and his wife, Emily, a 29-year-old fashion executive, live a few blocks from the Lexington Avenue subway line in the Flatiron district. But Mr. Ford said he takes the subway only occasionally in the winter, to avoid the cold when he cannot hail a cab.

Asked whether he had visited all five boroughs, he mentioned taking a helicopter ride across the city with fellow executives, at the invitation of Raymond W. Kelly, New York City’s police commissioner. “The only place I have not spent considerable time is Staten Island,” he said, adding that “I landed there in the helicopter, so I can say yes.”

Asked about his baseball loyalties, he responded: “I am a Yankees fan,” and added that he had yet to visit Citi Field, the home of the Mets.

He has breakfast most mornings at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, and he receives regular pedicures. (He described them as treatment for a foot condition.)

Mr. Ford declined to discuss what he is paid by the bank, but publicly available data suggests that he earns at least $1 million a year. Asked what role outsize pay packages played in fueling the financial crisis, Mr. Ford said he objected to capping executive compensation on Wall Street. “I am a capitalist,” he said. “I believe that people take risk, and there are rewards if they do well; they should lose if they don’t.”

What risk did he take that merits the kind of excessive salary he's getting from Merrill Lynch, which clearly hopes he'll follow Rahm Emanuel's footsteps into power where he can serve their interests? I guess the helicopter rides over the other 4 boroughs could be a risk-- or maybe the pedicures could result in an infection. Blecchhh. Kirsten Gillibrand is looking better by the minute.

Let me finish this discussion by quoting a couple of relevent paragraphs from Glenn Hurowitz's excellent book, Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party about why Ford is viewed-- even by other ConservaDems-- as a complete and toxic loser. The short version: inauthentic, then, now, always.

In a December 15, 2006 article, the cognitive scientist George Lakoff, famous for his groundbreaking works Don’t Think of an Elephant and Moral Politics, analyzed how Democrats could win in the south. He compared the loss of Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. to the surprise win of North Carolina congressman Heath Shuler, who ousted long-time arch-conservative Charles Taylor. Lakoff notes that while both Ford and Shuler were anti-choice, anti gay marriage, and anti-gun control, they presented themselves in very different ways. Lakoff cites an NPR interview in which reporter Melissa Block asked Shuler if his conservative positions on social issues would “fit in” with the Democratic Party. “It isn't about, necessarily, the social issues,” Shuler replied. “It's about protecting American families and American jobs, making sure that we increase the minimum wage and that we do things that encompass the entire nation and that will bring our nation together… [making] sure that we protect our country, and our God’s great creation, be good stewards of the land, and start providing health care that everyone can afford.” Shuler’s response deemphasized those issues on which he was more conservative and instead emphasized the progressive agenda that helped get him elected. And he stuck to that once he started casting votes-- sticking with his party on 92 percent of party loyalty votes; lower than average, but still quite high).

Ford, in contrast, tried to win by convincing voters that he was the more conservative option, basing his platform on conservative issues and a conservative framework. “He ran enthusiastically using conservative code words,” Lakoff writes. "Personal responsibility, strong moral values, character education, pro-family, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, eliminate abortion, and so on. He was trying to convince good ‘ol boy Tennesseans that he was one of them… he didn’t come across as authentic, and authenticity is the name of the game.”

Ford played the “Who’s more conservative?” game-- not surprisingly, the real conservative Republican won. Meanwhile other red staters (like Montana’s Jon Tester) were able to take advantage of the anti-Republican climate by running on a progressive agenda and emphasize their differences with Bush and the Republicans. So while Tester beat a heavily-financed incumbent in a state more Republican than Tennessee, Ford couldn’t do it even though his race was an open seat. 

Despite Ford’s disastrous strategy and defeat, James Carville actually spearheaded a campaign to make him DNC chair and replace Howard Dean (who had been largely responsible for the 50 state strategy of distributing resources around the country that helped relative dark horses like Shuler and Tester to win), where he could bring his losing politics to the nation. Fortunately, the Democrats actually in charge of electing the DNC chief decided they didn’t want a loser to replace a winner, and kept Dean on. But the Democratic Leadership Council had no such compunctions about hiring a loser. And so on January 25, 2007 the DLC named the Ford to be its head. It was a perfect match between an organization that had brought a failing strategy to the Democratic Party and a man who had ridden their failing strategy to actual defeat-- and apparently hadn’t learned his lesson.

When Will Ford's Political Opportunism Be Framed By A Reminder Of GOP Claims That He Was Only So Homophobic To Cover Up His Own Tendencies?

My favorite tweets this morning were the above from New York radio host Mike Signorile concerning reactionary Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford's lust for political office. This morning's Murdoch-owned NY Post announced that Ford, a career-long vicious homophobe, now supports-- not forced "cures," but... gay marriage. Earlier today a conservative DWT reader, DocWeasel, commented, weasel-like, that "Not only did Dems NOT free the slaves, they opposed '60s Civil Rights reform in much larger percentages than Republicans. If not for Republican votes, Civil Rights reforms under LBJ would not have passed." As I responded, he's correct. This has been a battle between progressives and conservatives, not between the shifting corporate parties. I remember as a school boy how there were so many southern Democrats fighting their party when it came to Civil Rights in the '60s. All that southern Democratic racist scum-- almost every single one of them-- joined the GOP, from Strom Thurmond, Phil Gramm, and Jesse Helms to Richard Shelby and Sonny Perdue. Parker Griffith is the latest of the breed. Their departure helped solidify the progressive nature of today's Democratic Party and the embrace they got from Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes absolutely defined the GOP as the party of racism, bigotry and hard core, unchallengable conservatism, a trend that began taking root in the 1920s. When conservative Democrats started abandoning the Democratic Party, they left Harold Ford, Jr. behind. African-American conservatives were not welcome. So he worked against progressive values inside the House Democratic caucus (and as a commentator on Fox and other right-wing TV programs), making common cause with the GOP on issue after issue. Take a look:



And here's Ford expressing outrage in a 2006 campaign ad that the Republicans had accused him of being pro-gay:



Today's Post reports that it's "another sign of his interest in running against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in this year's Democratic primary, [that] ex-Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. publicly said for the first time that he was in favor of same-sex marriage."

"He supports gay marriage, in the interest of fairness and equality," Ford spokesman Davidson Goldin told The Post.
Ford backed up that statement himself this morning on the "Today Show."
Host Matt Lauer asked, "So you're now in favor of same sex marriage?"

"Civil unions and same-sex marriage, yes," Ford said.

When Ford was still in the House, he was one of only 36 Democrats to vote for the blatantly homophobic Federal Marriage Amendment. The bill failed, 27 Republicans refusing to go along with the homophobia that so enchanted Ford and so many Blue Dogs. Among the Democrats who joined Ford in crossing the aisle that Sept 30, 2004 day were many of the Democrats who have been crossing the aisle to wreck President Obama's agenda for change this year: Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (Blue Dog-SD), Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Lincoln Davis (Blue Dog-TN), etc.

During his failed 2006 Senate campaign, Ford, now the president of the reactionary DLC, Ford thought it appropriate to jump into the New Jersey judicial ruling that favored same sex marriage. For no reason at all other than ugly politics, Ford issued a statement denouncing the New Jersey judges. On July 19 of that year he proudly voted for a constitutional amendment to forever ban same sex marriage. Only the 34 most viciously, hysterically anti-gay Democrats (including Ford) voted for it. It failed 236-187, largely because 27 Republicans deserted their party to vote with the Democrats.

It also should be noted that Ford's reactionary credentials-- and hypocrisy-- are not just centered on his homophobia. He's been an anti-Choice fanatic for his entire political career... and, as you can see from the video below, proud of it:



The retweet from Blogdiva goes right to the point of Ford's impending candidacy. It's all about the benjamins. The millionaire fundraisers who are encouraging Ford to run-- who all talk among each other but with no one else in the real world-- like the idea of Democrats who vote like Republicans. That's why they financially support the DLC, the corporately-oriented Insiders that Ford heads. Yesterday's NY Times emphasized the difficulties Gillibrand is facing because of the big money backers behind Ford. Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily’s List, takes the point that Ford's race is of great service to conservatives because progressives can "ill afford an expensive primary fight," which would be of great benefit to whichever rightist the GOP eventually vomits up to run against Gillibrand. Meanwhile, don't put it past "Fancy Ford" to dig up the old Republican accusations that he was so hysterically anti-gay to cover up his own bisexual tendencies. Now, he's liable to start floating them and whispering that he really is!