If Only DC Lobbyists Were The Electorate, The New Dems Would Be Kings Of The Hill

Democratic voters eliminated most of the Blue Dogs over the course of the last election cycle and a half. Most of them were defeated at the polls or were forced by the threat of defeat into retiring. This year, the worst of them who were left after the Blue Dog Apocalypse-- Dan Boren (OK), Heath Shuler (NC), Dennis Cardoza (CA) and Mike Ross (AR)-- are retiring. And two more-- Tim Holden and Jason Altmire, both of Pennsylvania, were defeated in primaries last month. Of the dreck that's left, Joe Donnelly decided to take a Hail Mary shot at a Senate seat and 2 are almost sure to lose in November: John Barrow (GA) and Larry Kissell (NC). Three others, Leonard Boswell (IA), Ben Chandler (KY) and Jim Matheson (UT), have, at best, a 50-50 shot at returning to Congress in 2013. And many Blue Dog fellow travelers-- those who don't call themselves Blue Dogs but always vote the Blue Dog line-- like Mark Crtiz (PA), Bill Owens (NY), Kathy Hochul (NY) are in bad shape for reelection. New Blue Dogs Steve Israel has been recruiting, like Hayden Rogers (NC), Brendan Mullen (NC), Clark Hall (AR), Leonard Bembry (FL), and Rob Wallace (OK), have virtually no chance to win, despite the immense sums of money the DCCC is wasting on them.

The end of the ConservaDems? Don't be silly. The congressional wing of the Democratic Party is, despite Nancy Pelosi and despite a more focused Progressive Caucus, very much under the control of thoroughly corrupt corporate Democratic careerists, particularly Steny Hoyer, who is making his move on the Speakership to Joseph Crowley, head of the New Dems (read DLC). If Crowley survives his Ethics Committee investigations-- which he probably will, the committee being Capitol Hill's biggest joke, he stands to rise even further in the party leadership. Like Hoyer, he's all about aggregating big money for compliant members willing to help him build his power base. And most of the Blue Dogs have migrated over to Crowley's New Dems. As I've said before, the New Dems are basically the Blue Dogs without the KKK accoutrements. Blue Dogs currently in the 42 member New Dem caucus include John Barrow (GA), Adam Schiff (CA), Mike McIntyre (NC), Jim Cooper (TN), David Scott (GA), Kurt Schrader (OR), Jason Altmire (PA), and Loretta Sanchez (CA). It also includes aspiring House leaders-- Crowley (NY), Allyson Schwartz (PA), Ron Kind (WI), Rick Larsen (WA), Jim Himes (CT), Karen Bass (CA), Jared Polis (CO) and there are 3 members seeking Senate seats: Shelley Berkley (NV), Martin Heinrich (NM), and Chris Murphy (CT).

Yesterday a particularly ignorant-- although not atypical-- Politico writer described this essentially conservative group, which specializes in working with Big Business for cash, as having politics that "range roughly from far left to slightly left of center." The article was another slimy Crowley puff piece in the slimiest of DC trade papers and it is filled with misinformation about what the New Dems essentially are all about. The New Dems, the article asserts, "are gunning for a host of battleground seats in suburban America that could tip the House back to their party this fall."

“When we win back the House, it is going to be because of the linchpin, which is the New Democrat Coalition,” said the group’s chairman, New York Rep. Joe Crowley. “That is going to be the focus of the appeal-- not only to Democrats but to independent voters.”

The New Dems’ formula for survival in an increasingly polarized Capitol Hill: tack left on social issues but veer toward the center on business-- and economic-oriented policies that could appeal to independent and moderate voters.

Yes, many-- though not all-- of it's members accept basic Democratic values like equality and Choice but that isn't what the group is about. The group is about cold hard cash-- corporate cash-- and playing footsie with Big Business to get it. This is the "Free" trade wing of the Democratic Party, for example. You know how people say the Republican Party is not your father's GOP because it's gone so far to the right? Well, the New Dems is your father's Republican Party. As a group their biggest obsession is lowering the corporate tax rate. If the Democrats make a Grand Bargain with the GOP in December-- one that sells out Social Security and Medicare as many people expect-- it will be largely put together by New Dems, flush with cash from their corporate donors.

New Dems say their political profile will be key in several competitive House races this fall, and several of the group’s top endorsements are in races that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has pinpointed as prime pickup opportunities this November.

Among them are Ami Bera of California, Brad Schneider of Illinois, Denny Heck of Washington state, Joaquin Castro of Texas and Florida candidates Val Demings, Keith Fitzgerald and Pat Murphy. Former Reps. Bill Foster of Illinois and Dan Maffei of New York are also backed by the New Dems.

“I think there is a rising interest in the message of groups like the New Dems who are saying, ‘We need to stop the partisan bickering, put the differences aside and find that common ground,” said Schneider, a businessman who in March fended off a primary challenge from Ilya Sheyman-- a candidate backed by national progressives.

The New Dems’ political arm has endorsed 20 current candidates and has raised $1.4 million this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The New Dems also boast of their ties to the DCCC, where three of the four national chair positions are held by New Dems. They include Crowley, the national finance chairman; Pennsylvania Rep. Allyson Schwartz, the national chairwoman for recruiting and candidate services; and Puerto Rico Del. Pedro Pierluisi (D-Puerto Rico), the national chairman for community mobilization.

DCCC Chairman Steve Israel of New York is a former New Dem member, and a handful of other New Dems have taken key roles at the DCCC.

...While Blue Dogs primarily come from rural and Southern United States, the New Dems hail from suburban and exurban areas-- which, Democrats believe, will be the battleground in House races this fall. And so while redistricting has dramatically weakened the Blue Dogs’ prospects, New Dems say redistricting actually has helped because their geographical strengths are in areas where it was more difficult to distort district lines, Crowley said.

“The success of the Democratic Party in the fall elections, I think, squarely is linked to the success of the New Democrat Coalition,” Crowley said. “Overall, the absence of a similar entity of the Republican Party is what I think is going to be problematic for them in the future.”

Last cycle the New Dems PAC, which is run by radical right Blue Dog Jason Altmire, gave over $700,000 to candidates. Most of it was wasted on conservatives who lost because they voted with Republicans and against Democrats, like Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA), Lincoln Davis (Blue Dog-TN), Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), John Adler (NJ), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (Blue Dog-SD), Earl Pomeroy (Blue Dog-ND), Kathleen Dahlkemper (Blue Dog-PA), Ike Skelton (MO), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), Bob Etheridge (NC), Deborah Halvorson (IL), Suzanne Kosmas (FL), Betsy Markey (Blue Dog-CO), Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA). And none of their recruits won either. This is the perfect group for Beltway Broderists looking for Democrats to be more like Republicans.

New Dems On Parade-- Let's Keep An Eye On Each And Every One Of Them

Nerdy Van Nerdwinkle (WA), new New Dem chair

Many of the same characters are in the BlueDogs, Problem Solvers, New Dems and other corporately-funded groups of "centrist" Democrats that make up the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Last week the New Dems elected their new leadership team. Derek Kilmer (WA) takes over from Jim Himes (CT) as chairman. And there are 4 vice-chairs: Scott Peters (CA), Suzann DelBene (WA), Terri Sewell (AL) and Ann Kuster (NH).

But the big news is which newly elected freshmen had decided to declare themselves members of Congress' most corrupt entity, Wall Street's cat's paw inside the Democratic conference. There were few surprises for DWT since we've been warning about most of these 30 candidates alluring the cycle. Six of the seven freshmen who joined the Blue Dog Coalition last week also joined the New Dems, hard core rightist Jeff Van Drew (NJ) being the exception. There's not that big a difference between the Blue Dogs and the New Dems and most of the Blue Dogs are also New Dem members. Traditionall, the Blue Dogs have been more of a hate group (anti-gay, anti-Choice, anti-progressive, etc) and the New Dems just really been all about corruption-- but the two have almost entire melded now. These are the new Blue Dogs:

• Jeff Van Drew (NJ)
• Mikie Sherrill (NJ)
• Xochitl Small (NM)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY)
• Max Rose (NY)
• Ben McAdams (UT)
• Abigail Spanberger (VA)

Before we get to the list of New Dems, the Congressional Progressive Caucus also announced its new members-- 25 of 'em, although 5 are also New Dems, which is bizarre since it's literally impossible to be a progressive and a New Dem, although Mark Pocan seems to think bringing conservatives paying lip service to progressivism will be good for fundraising... or something like that. Among real-- all-in-- progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Rashida Tlaib (MI) and Ilhan Omar (MN), these are the ones who are... also New Dems:

• Katie Hill (CA)
• Debbie Powell (FL)
• Angie Craig (MN)
• Susan Wild (PA)
• Veronica Escobar (TX)

None of them have, for example, signed onto the Green New Deal (at least not yet), even though several of them campaigned very hard on global warming and on environmental issues. Here's the full list of the freshman New Dems. Warning: hope for the best/expect the worst:

• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
• Greg Stanton (AZ)
• Josh Harder (CA)
• Katie Hill (CA)
• Harley Rouda (CA)
• Jason Crow (CO)
• Debbie Powell (FL)
• Sean Casten (IL)
• Sharice Davids (KS)
• Elissa Slotkin (MI)
• Haley Stevens (MI)
• Angie Craig (MN)
• Sean Phillips (MN)
• Susie Lee (NV)
• Chris Pappas (NH)
• Tom Malinowski (NJ)
• Mikie Sherrill (NJ)
• Xochitl Small (NM)
• Max Rose (NY)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY)
• Chrissy Houlahan (PA)
• Susan Wild (PA)
• Lizzie Fletcher (TX)
• Veronica Escobar (TX)
• Colin Allred (TX)
• Ben McAdams (UT)
• Elaine Luria (VA)
• Abigail Spanberger (VA)
• Jennifer Wexton (VA)
• Kim Schrier (WA)

Meanwhile, two Progressive Caucus freshmen who are already seated because of filling empty seats, Joe Morelle (D-NY) and Mary Scanlon (D-PA), are off to good PERFECT starts. Click on the graphic to be able to read which House members are voting the way all House members should be voting:

Are New Dems Really Democrats. A Vote Yesterday Answers The Question

One of the smarter members of Congress told me this after reading this post today: "Generally speaking, if someone offers you campaign money in order to change a law affecting that certain someone, it’s safe to say that it’s not a change for the better. This basic understanding seems to elude virtually every Member of Congress, in both parties-- but some more than others."

Friday morning there was a vote in the House-- not covered by the media at all-- that separated actual Democrats from the New Dems, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. The bill came out of the House Financial Services Committee and was presented for the committee by French Hill of Arkansas. Only one Republican voted against it, former Democrat, Walter Jones (R-NC). H.R.4790, the Volcker Rule Regulatory Harmonization Act, had 3 co-sponsors from the committee, Randy Hultgren (R-IL) and two New Dems who have been bought by Wall Street, Josh Gottheimer (NJ-$868,574 this year) and Bill Foster (IL-$234,785 this year). The bill passed with every Republican but one and with 78 Democrats, primarily New Dems and Blue Dogs-- 300 to 104. 103 Democrats, led by Pelosi voted against it.

The Volcker Rule Regulatory Harmonization Act was a top priority for Wall Street this year. Why? After a conference committee with the Senate-- and assuming Trump signs it-- the bill will weaken the Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from gambling-- they call it "making speculative investments"-- with their ordinary depositors' money, by exempting banks with less than $10 billion in assets. The bill takes the FDIC out of the regulatory equation and leaves the policing up to the very Wall Street-friendly Federal Reserve. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the chair of the FDIC explained that exempting smaller banks would "open a door" to risky behavior. He said supervisors catch risky trades after they go south, not before: "That is why you have the Volcker rule in the first place."

The American Bankers Association, Citigroup and Bank of America were the big players in lobbying to weaken the Volcker Rule-- as the major campaign contributors to the New Dems.

Blue America doesn't endorse New Dems. They muddy the Democratic Party brand and make it difficult for voters to understand that there is a difference between the two Beltway parties. At one point, for example, we were leaning towards endorsing Harley Rouda as the best-- if flawed (ex-Republican)-- candidate to take on Dana Rohrabach had already endorsed two other candidates when the New Dems offered them tentative endorsements. One rejected it and she stayed on our endorsement list. The other happily accepted it and-- she's no longer a Blue America candidate. There are no good New Dems. They are the Wall Street wing, the Republican wing. And endorsement of a New Dem means the Republican is so bad that you're holding your nose and openly, consciously embracing a lesser-of-two evils approach.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus always had one thing going for it, a thing that enabled it to influence the House Democratic Conference in a progressive direction. They've left that go and have been surpassed in influence-- completely and utterly surpassed-- by the New Dems, now the power center of the Democratic Party. These are the members of the New Dems and their lifetime bribes-- or "contributions" as they prefer to term it-- from the Financial Sector). The bolded names voted with the GOP yesterday to weaken the Volcker Rule. First the New Dems' 9 elected offices

• Jim Himes (CT- $5,979,437)
• Suzan DelBene (WA- $705,640)
• Derik Kilmer (WA- $823,865)
• Jared Polis (CO- $1,039,777)
• Terri Sewell (AL- $1,810,721)-absent
• Gerry Connolly (VA- $1,212,467)
• Ron Kind (WI- $3,045,096)
• Kathleen Rice (NY- $1,550,271)
• Scott Peters (CA- $1,298,375)
• Pete Aguilar (CA- $800,195)
• Ami Bera (CA- $1,339,115)
• Donald Beyer (VA- $783,581)
• Brendan Boyle (PA- $363,247)
• Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE- $230,874)
• Anthony Brown (MD- $155,108)
• Julia Brownley (CA- $561,606)
• Cheri Bustos (IL- $844,194)- absent
• Salud Carbajal (CA- $433,607)
• Tony Cardenas (CA- $691,556)
• Andre Carson (IN- $818,084)
• Joaquin Castro (TX- $567,658)
• Lou Correa (CA- $199,690)
• Jim Costa (CA- $1,002,628)
• Joe Courtney (CT- $1,229,696)
• Charlie Crist (FL- $2,895,457)
• Henry Cuellar (TX- $1,391,863)
• Susan Davis (CA- $504,546)
• John Delaney (MD- $2,349,692)
• Val Demings (FL- $308,304)
• Eliot Engel (NY- $1,768,101)
• Elizabeth Esty (CT- $1,048,648)
• Bill Foster (IL- $2,417,863)
• Vicente Gonzalez (TX- $172,214
• Josh Gottheimer (NJ- $1,839,60)
• Colleen Hanabusa (HI- $880,163)
• Denny Heck (WA- $1,295,242)
• Bill Keating (MA- $518,403)
• Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL- $782,588)
• Annie Kuster (NH- $1,259,136)
• Rick Larsen (WA- $991,852)
• Brenda Lawrence (MI- $289,825)
• Al Lawson (FL- $151,100)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (NY- $2,614,948)
• Donald McEachin (VA- $95,119)
• Gregory Meeks (NY- $3,356,088)
• Seth Moulton (MA- $1,516,542)
• Stephanie Murphy (FL- $273,423)
• Donald Norcross (NJ- $854,512)
• Tom O'Halleran (AZ- $276,004)
• Beto O'Rourke (TX- $840,145)
• Ed Perlmutter (CO- $3,776,273)
• Mike Quigley (IL- $936,529)
• Cedric Richmond (LA- $520,800)
• Raul Ruiz (CA- $710,932)
• Adam Schiff (CA- $1,452,221)
• Brad Schneider (IL- $1,847,646)
• Kurt Schrader (OR- $889,840)
• David Scott (GA- $3,059,594)- absent
• Kyrsten Sinema (AZ- $2,812,394)
• Adam Smith (WA- $1,087,860)
• Darren Soto (FL- $186,115)
• Tom Suozzi (NY- $696,402)
• Norma Torres (CA- $132,880)
• Juan Vargas (CA- $1,502,865)
• Marc Veasey (TX- $520,706)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL- $2,344,886)

Takeaway: the New Dems are the heart and soul of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. And they're taking over. Joe Crowley is trying to vote like a Democrat lately so he can slip into the speaker's chair but he was the chair of the New Dem caucus for many years and still-- along with another "non-member," Steny Hoyer-- calls the shots there.

Tim Canova is the independent progressive South Florida law professor running for the seat Wasserman Schultz has been occupying-- and running her scams through-- for far too long. This morning, he told us that "Debbie Wasserman Schultz claims to be fighting for a progressive agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth. She’s been swimming in corporate money for years and shamelessly pushing corporate interests in Congress. For instance, she’s taken millions of dollars from big Wall Street banks, payday lenders and other financial institutions. In return, she shills for payday lenders and votes to deregulate Wall Street banks, most recently voting to exempt banks with less than $10 billion in assets from the Volcker Rule, a key provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, that seeks to prevent banks from gambling with their depositors’ money. In the past, Wasserman Schultz has pushed a Republican bill to prevent the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from regulating predatory payday lending-- now part of the Trump administration’s agenda for financial deregulation. Ask Wasserman Schultz about progressive alternatives to payday lending-- such as community banking, public banking, postal banking-- and she will have no idea what you’re talking about. And that’s because it’s not part of the agenda of her Wall Street cronies."

There were only 14 New Dems who voted against the bill many of them breaking with Wall Street out of fear of primaries by real Democrats-- like Darren Soto who will soon be fighting progressive champion Alan Grayson for his political life-- or for similar political considerations. As for the future... the DCCC is not recruiting good government reformers like Canova. No way! Instead it is fanatically recruiting corrupt New Dems like Wasserman Schultz as Democratic candidates this cycle, doing all they can to crush independent-minded progressives.

The Blue Dogs Are A Spent Force... Until You See How They've Ditched The White Sheets And Hoods And Morphed Into The New Dems

Kind & Crowley-- the bad news bears, if you're a working American

One of the reasons why it was so important that Nancy Pelosi decided to stay on as House Minority Leader was because what is building up behind her to take over the House Democratic Caucus. The threat of the Blue Dogs is dead-- at least for now-- but the Blue Dogs have morphed into the New Dems, a corporately-financed coalition of Big Business shills within the Democratic Party. Although almost all the detritus left over from the Blue Dogs has joined the New Dems, the New Dems aren't "as bad" as the Blue Dogs were. Well... they're not as bad on social issues-- Blue Dogs being generally homophobic, anti-Choice, anti-immigrant, etc-- but they are every bit as bad on economic and fiscal issues. These are the Democrats who want to make a deal with the GOP to allow a failed European Austerity Agenda take hold in America. Basically, they seek to balance the budget on the backs of working families.

"Former" New Dems Steve Israel (who is also a "former" Blue Dog) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are pushing caucus members to elect New Dem chairman Joe Crowley, the most corrupt Democrat in Congress, to the position of House Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman over iconic progressive Barbara Lee. They are pushing the meme that the New Dems are the rising force inside the Party. In fact, they're doing more than pushing the meme. During the 2012 cycle, Israel, as Chairman, used the DCCC to recruit and support New Dems (and Blue Dogs-- all of whom but Pete Gallego-- failed dismally) and undermined progressives. There are 49 Democratic freshmen entering Congress in January. The DCCC actively backed (spent money on electing) 5 progressives who won-- Lois Frankel (FL), Raul Ruiz (CA), Annie Kuster (NH), Carol Shea-Porter (NH) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ)-- and double the number of New Dems who won-- Ami Bera (CA), Scott Peters (CA), Suzan DelBene (WA), Elizabeth Esty (CT), Bill Foster (IL), Joe Garcia (FL), Patrick Murphy (FL), Dan Maffei (NY), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), and Brad Schneider (IL). Israel also wasted millions and millions of dollars trying to elect other New Dems and Blue Dogs who ultimately lost, while ignoring-- and ever undercutting-- progressives all across the country who ran.

Friday, The Hill reported that the conservative, corporate-oriented New Dems are planning "to fill the power vacuum created by the recent and rapid decline of the Blue Dog Coalition," without even mentioning that half the Blue Dogs who managed to survive are new Dems.

The group-- whose members advocate a free-trade, business-friendly agenda that sometimes bucks the party-- is hoping to emerge as a powerbroker in the 113th Congress.

Although the 15-year-old group of centrists has been frequently overshadowed by the conservative-leaning Blue Dogs and the liberals of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, New Democrats say their growing membership-- combined with the looming debates over economic issues they see as their bread and butter-- will give them greater sway in the fights that will almost certainly define the coming months on Capitol Hill.

"We've got a group of members that is well-represented from throughout the country who are willing to roll up our sleeves and work with anyone to try to find some common-sense and balanced and fair solutions to the fiscal hole that we're in right now," Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), the newly-elected chairman of the coalition, said Thursday. "We hope in the days to come to play that constructive role."

Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.), a vice-chairwoman of the coalition, echoed that message this week, casting the New Democrats as an above-the-fray group that will ignore partisan politics in the name of getting things done.

...Working in their favor, the group has picked up more than a dozen new members since the Nov. 6 elections-- a combination of newly elected-Democrats and incumbents who have joined this month-- growing their ranks to at least 52 next year. (A few House races are still too close to call). Meanwhile, the Blue Dog Democrats-- who boasted a membership of 54 in the 111th Congress-- will see that number shrink to 14 in the 113th.

The New Democrats see new leverage in those shifting dynamics, and they're hoping to exert it in the upcoming budget battles.

"We must address our nation's debt and tackle long-term deficit reduction to put our nation on a path towards strengthened and sustainable growth," the group wrote Thursday to President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "Our group will work with you to secure agreement on a plan of significance."

Members of the group say they can transcend the partisanship they blame for the political stalemate that defined the last two years on Capitol Hill.

"Boehner's got to deal with the Republicans, the president's got to deal with the Democrats," Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.). "The reality is there're groups within those [parties] that make it far more difficult, beyond their numbers, to reach a deal."

Still, New Democrats have struggled in efforts to sway the major policy debates of recent years. And with the Democrats still in the House minority, there's more pressure on all party members to rally behind their leadership-- led by the liberal Pelosi-- in opposition to the conservative Republicans under Boehner.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.), another vice chairman of the New Democrats, acknowledged Friday that the coalition has been less influential than it's hoped in the past. But the high-stakes negotiations on the "fiscal cliff" and a deficit-reduction package, he was quick to add, provide the group with the "legislative opportunity" to be "serious players" in those coming fights.

"We're going to assert our values, our views, our take on something even if that might mean that it's somewhat at variance with, say, prevailing wisdom in our Caucus … or the White House," he said. "We can provide some political space for broadening our debate on economic issues in our Caucus."

Connolly was quick to point out that New Democrats are already pushing back against Pelosi's early and blanket opposition to entitlement benefit cuts as part of the budget negotiations. (The group says all options should be on the table in this early stage of the talks). He also claimed the group was influential in providing guidance to other Democrats surrounding Friday's passage of legislation expanding trade with Russia-- a proposal the group supported.

"Fair enough that you're skeptical-- I've heard it before," Connolly said of the group's influence. "But I think you're already seeing signs of a more assertive role."

And one of the first things the New Dems are attempting is to destroy Barbara Lee's candidacy in favor of Crowley. The vote is on Nov. 29. The other thing The Hill article managed to forget is a list of the Democrats who are in the New Dems:

Terri Sewell (AL)
Ron Barber (AZ)
Karen Bass (CA)
Lois Capps (CA)
Adam Schiff (Blue Dog-CA)
Loretta Sanchez (Blue Dog-CA)
Susan Davis (CA)
Jared Polis (CO)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
Joe Courtney (CT)
Jim Himes (CT)
John Carney (DE)
John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)
David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)
Colleen Hanabusa (HI)
Mike Quigley (IL)
Andre Carson (IN)
Cedric Richmind (LA)
Gary Peters (MI)
Rush Holt (NJ)
Carolyn McCarthy (NY)
Joe Crowley (NY)
Eliot Engel (NY)
Bill Owens (NY)
Brian Higgins (NY)
Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC)
Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
Allyson Schwartz (PA)
Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
Jim Moran (VA)
Gerry Connolly (VA)
Rick Larsen (WA)
Adam Smith (WA)
Ron Kind (WI)

And the newly-elected members:

Ami Bera (CA)
Scott Peters (CA)
Joaquin Castro (TX)
Suzan DelBene (WA)
John Delaney (MD)
Elizabeth Esty (CT)
Bill Foster (IL)
Joe Garcia (FL)
Patrick Murphy (FL), actually a Republican masquerading as a conservative Democrat
Denny Heck (WA)
Derek Kilmer (WA)
Dan Maffei (NY)
Sean Patrick Maloney (NY)
Brad Schneider (IL)
Juan Vargas (CA)

Politicians Don't Learn Any Lessons Except The Ones They Want To Learn

Destroyers of the Democratic brand

People-- and organizations-- after experiencing setbacks, even severe setbacks, more often than not learn the lessons that serve the interests of the existing (failed) power structure and the status quo. When Pelosi picked obscure New Mexico congressman Ben Ray Luján out of a hat to replace Steve Israel as head of the DCCC, many wondered if this would lead to the kind of structural reform within the DCCC that could turned the tragically flawed, self-sustaining but always-losing operation into a winner. Luján and Israel immediately sent a signal that there would be no structural changes and that even the architects of the November catastrophe-- Israel (who got a leadership promotion) and DCCC Executive Director Kelly Ward (who was rehired)-- would be given a free hand to continue wrecking the Democratic Party brand.

Over the weekend, writing for Salon, Mike Conrad dug into how Democratic power mongers learn the wrong lessons from their miserable defeats. He lays much of the blame for the dysfunctional mindset within the party at the door of the corporately owned, Wall Street-friendly so-called New Dems, the anti-progressive/anti-populist wing of the Democratic Party. For Conrad the cycle started with Reagan's crushing defeat of Walter Mondale in 1984.

The New Dems’ scare story goes something like this: In 1984 Walter Mondale lost 49 states because he ran as a Super Liberal. Democrats would have kept losing if the New Dems had not formed to take control of and steer the party. In 1992 Bill Clinton ran as Centrist Man and Democrats started winning elections again. Now, economic progressives who prioritize other things before Wall Street’s approval are causing trouble. If these progressives Democrats represent the party it will again be banished to the political wilderness and forced to relearn the lesson of the ’80s and ’90s.

This premise is not only wrongheaded, in important ways it’s backwards. The temptation not to relitigate something that is, after all, over 30 years in the past is obviated by 1984’s continued role as the go-to cudgel against progressive Democrats. The New Dems’ reliance on the ’84 cautionary tale is illustrative of an under-appreciated dynamic in the struggle between the progressive/populist coalition and the Wall Street wing: there never really was a big, public “fight for the soul of the party” in the 80’s and 90’s. While Bill de Blasio’s election in New York and Rahm Emanuel’s unexpected struggle in Chicago, along with the prominence of Elizabeth Warren, may seem like a lot of gained ground in short time, it’s not Too Much Too Soon. It’s long overdue.

Wall Street Dems have always been vulnerable to confrontation but they’ve had the good fortune to largely avoid it. As a latent opposing coalition rallied through the demonstration effects of visible progressive populists is rising to challenge the New Dems they’re trying to tap into longstanding progressive self-doubt, warning Democrats who basically agree with the progressives that acting on their conviction would ultimately do harm to causes they care about. Many of the lingering doubts among progressives about the present moment, while understandable, are to a large degree a product of a conventional wisdom forged in the 80’s that was and is mostly baseless.  As Democratic losses demoralized the party faithful, the New Dems’ shifted from trying to sell their agenda on the merits to claiming that their self-proclaimed “centrism” was the only way a Democrat could hope to win. (They were fond of stating the obvious truth that a candidate can’t do too much to advance anything good or help stop anything awful, unless they can first get elected — as if it was some kind of discussion-ender that proved their claim that only New Dems could win.) Unfortunately, their assertions were all too rarely challenged and quickly gained traction, prominence and, finally, conventional wisdom status. Challenging them now may be late but better late than never.

James Carville has pleaded with Democrats to “forget about 1984.” If more progressives and Dems cross-examine the 1984 story, the New Dems are going to wish they had taken Carville’s advice.  A more realistic accounting of 1984 than the prevailing story involves the three people who have probably done the most to drag the Democratic Party to the right (and Wall Street’s idea of the “center”): Al From (the DLC’s founding ideologue), William Galston (the DLC and Third Way) and the New Dems’ economic policy guru Robert Rubin. From and Galston routinely portray 1984 as a harsh truth Democrats had to reckon with or face electoral irrelevancy.

Mondale’s loss is linked to Carter’s by From to create a series of seemingly similar losses that cried out for the DLC to take over the party. The losses are similar but not in the way From claims. As an adviser on inflation in the Carter Administration From served the most economically conservative post-war Democratic president. His thinking was well to the economic right of Congressional Democrats. By From’s own characterization, he was one of the more aggressive voices in the inflation debate within the Carter White House. Though he would go on to cast himself as a purveyor of essential strategic insights, From writes in his book “The New Democrats and the Return to Power” that to him inflation strategy memos were besides the point. Just get inflation down now. “Nothing else mattered.”

Carter was warned by other Democrats that appointing Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve would be a mistake. They feared Volcker would go overboard in his fight against inflation and the ensuing recession would doom the party in 1980. Carter went with the From school and appointed Volcker, who throttled interest rates triggering a recession. As Dean Baker, an economist with a very good track record and political instincts to match put it to me, Volcker was not messing around. One easy to understand way to the environment as Volcker’s actions set in is that it was not dissimilar from when Lehman Brothers failed in 2008. Set aside progressive voices advocating a sectoral approach, oil prices, “discredited” Keynesianism and the confluence of events in this era. Even those who agreed with From should have been able to see the predictable political consequences of what Volcker did coming. Policy, like restrictions on credit cards in the winter of 1980, was guaranteed to be met with political backlash. Ironically, Volcker is now seen as closer to the progressive side of economic policy debates largely, and to his credit, because of his relatively strong views on financial regulation. Still, when Paul Volcker is the stalwart economic progressive in a room it’s an indication of how far the nominally Democratic debate lurched to the right at the national level.

Volcker’s timing as a contributor to Carter’s loss should not have eluded anyone involved in the debate, especially From. Instead Carter’s loss served as the opening salvo in From’s case for the necessity of the New Dems. From writes that following Carter, “the Democrats were no longer viewed as the party of prosperity,” which should not be surprising considering a Democrat was in the White House during the onset of the first of the two Volcker recessions. Of course the party in the White House is going to bear the brunt of the blame and everything they say and do will be seen through the prism of the economic insecurity they’re associated with.

The “false cause fallacy” is From’s stock-in-trade. A bad thing happened and Al From was sad. His friends in the White House lost their jobs (which couldn’t have been a pleasant experience, but was not in and of itself proof of anything). When a good thing eventually happened it had to be due to what Al From had done in the interim. And what From was doing before the bad thing happened is irrelevant. That’s just science right there.

By the time the 1984 cycle began Walter Mondale had already become more of a Jimmy Carter Democrat as Vice President, going from someone more in line with Congressional Democrats and a potential bridge to the member of Carter’s team dispatched to tell Dems what the Administration was doing. Mondale, who still believes his Robert Rubin-flavored deficit pitch was correct on the merits, ran a “new realism” campaign that came down to a noun, a verb and deficits and debt. He went so far as telling people who were more focused on a jobs deficit than a budget deficit that “the only way to get hope” for America was “to get these deficits down.” The Democratic platform underwent a real shift from 1976 and even 1980 under Carter to the bang-up job done in 1984. The convention issue of Congressional Quarterly declared it the “most conservative platform of the last 50 years.” The New Dems should love the national iteration of Mondale. In a number of ways he was their poster candidate.

Robert Rubin, then of Goldman Sachs, worked on the Mondale campaign. It was Rubin’s Wall Street wing that convinced Mondale to say the line that was later portrayed as the height of economic liberalism by the New Dems. This was confirmed by Mondale to Robert Kuttner. At his most visible moment Mondale would embody a caricature of a hair shirt-dispensing neoliberal, giving a speech that wore his deficit obsession as a badge of honor. “Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you, I just did.”

The Wall Street Journal and paragons of Beltway “centrism” David Broder and the New Republic lavished praise on Mondale for this. Note that there is no discretion in whose taxes are going up and the deficit is portrayed as the sum of all economic policy virtue. The latter is a New Dem tick that we see to this day.  Voters will mirror elected officials’ stated concern for the budget deficit, especially when leading politicians in both parties constantly talk about it, but voters generally see deficit reduction as shorthand to express their legitimate “I’m falling behind” sentiment. They do not vote on it and definitely don’t monitor CBO reports (note: public opinion of where the deficit is headed does not track with where it is actually headed). Instead they’re rightly focused on good jobs, their income and their overall economic security. No one, except for pundits in DC and big donors on Wall Street, really cares about the deficit.

By the time Mondale gave this speech, the economy was rapidly recovering from the second Volcker recession. Interest rates dropped and so in turn did unemployment which was in turn followed by Reagan’s recovery in public opinion. After not being particularly popular for the first part of his first term, Reagan’s approval rating climbed from low 40s territory in early 1983 to the mid-to-high 50s around Election Day 1984. It was in this context that Reagan would claim 49 states. Only at the very end of the campaign did Mondale return to Minnesota, his home state and the one state he would barely carry and put the Minnesota progressive populist tradition on display. But in the prevalent analysis of what happened Volcker’s timing and Mondale’s Rubinism would be largely ignored in favor of a political spectrum positioning take advanced by the DLC. William Galston, who served as Mondale’s issues director and had long been harboring a positioning-based theory of elections, claimed the results weren’t the rejection of a man but a party and its philosophy. After 1984, lead New Dem Gary Hart emphasized that he was not Hubert Humphrey or Eleanor Roosevelt. This says a lot about the New Dems and none of it is good. Humphrey had clashed with Carter over the moves that ended up sealing the fate of Carter and his Vice President Mondale in consecutive elections. Public opinion polling continued to show the New Deal in the form of  Social Security and the minimum wage to be highly popular, while deficit fetishism had utterly failed to persuade or mobilize.

The New Dems’ supposed vindication came when Bill Clinton won in 1992. But one could make a strong argument that Bill Clinton ran as more of an economic populist than the extreme deficit hawk Mondale or the windfall profits tax-repealing technocrat Mike Dukakis before him. It wasn’t until Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and people like conservaDem Lloyd Bentsen prevailed over Clinton’s earlier political advisers soon after the election that Bill Clinton became the Rubinite he is now remembered as in more progressive circles. Clinton would return to a more populist form to successfully run for re-election as the determined defender of Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment.

The hits keep coming. In more recent years New Dems have tried to apply the 1984 “lesson” to whatever political moment they’re in. Before declaring itself the New DLC (because in their mind the word “new” is some kind of magic incantation) and then ultimately folding and giving way to Third Way, the DLC tarred Democrats with the pejorative “member of the unelectable Mondale wing.” The trait that earned a Democrat this label circa 2003 was opposition to the Iraq war, a sin no Democrat with serious future national aspirations could commit lest they consign themselves to irrevocable Not President status. Anyone who would have suggested to the DLC that the next Democrat to win the White House would be a Hyde Park State Senator named Barack Obama elected in large part because of his opposition to the Iraq war would have been met with all sorts of political spectrum positioning-based derision.

In 2006 Kentucky populist John Yarmuth was written off by then-DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel as too progressive to win. Yarmuth won and has remained outspoken in the House while winning re-election ever since while, for the record, Rahm’s prized Blue Dogs have seen their ranks decimated multiple times over (and Rahm himself is now struggling to hold onto his own mayoral seat in Chicago). In 2012 Matt Cartwright ran as a proud economic progressive FDR Democrat challenging 10-term incumbent Blue Dog Rep. Tim Holden for the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania’s newly redistricted 17th District. When Cartwright prevailed economic conservaDems in DC warned that Cartwright’s win could herald an era of unelectable Democrats ousting them in primaries. Cartwright defeated his Republican opponent in the general election by 22 points.

On the national level, Bill Daley, possibly the quintessential JPM Dem, who has gone from from JPMorgan to Third Way (if that can be considered a journey at all-- it really shouldn’t be), to a disastrous stint as Obama’s Chief of Staff, to dropping out of a Democratic primary in Illinois to pre-empt losing, wrote a typical warning in the Washington Post citing the defection of Alabama conservaDem Parker Griffith as a sign that the party was moving away from a position from which it could win. Alabama Democrats acted in accordance with Daley’s wishes and got Parker back, nominating him for Governor in 2014. Griffith lost by 30 points then quickly commenced blaming the “far left.” To paraphrase a common saying about conservative ideology in Democratic quarters, New Dem “centrism” cannot fail, it can only be failed.

From its rise to its present reign in DC, New Dem dogma has turned a blind eye to a litany of examples in many of the very places that give the party a majority in Congress and the electoral votes to put the nominee over the top in a presidential race. Tom Harkin’s five Senate wins in swing state Iowa; Sherrod Brown’s two in Ohio; Paul Wellstone and Al Franken’s two each in Minnesota; Russ Feingold’s three (look for a fourth if he runs in 2016) and Tammy Baldwin’s win in Wisconsin. Baldwin is joined by Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall, Elizabeth Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse and Mazie Hirono in the group of progressive Senate Democrats who have defeated so-called “moderate” Republicans states ranging from purple to light blue to deep blue.

...The fight for the economic direction of the party that has only began in earnest in recent years is lopsided one. While there have always been a form of conservative Democrat, from the Bourbon Dems to Al Smith’s persona vendetta against FDR to Dixiecrats to “Boll Weevils” and Atari Dems to Blue Dogs and New Dems, they’ve never been this at odds with the Democratic voting and activist base — or the views of the majority of the country on a majority of major economic issues. The progressive/populist coalition is the result of the New Deal and Civil Rights Act. You can see a clear through-line in elected Dems from Hubert Humphrey to Tom Harkin to Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin in the Senate and Xavier Becerra, Marc Pocan, Jan Schakowsky and Donna Edwards in the House. The other side of the proverbial battle comes down to big donors from the financial sector and those who see it as paramount. They have little voting or organizing constituency to speak of. They do have two things. The first is tons of money. The second is a choice between two major parties. The Legion of Hedge Fund Mangers tends to be socially liberal and elected Republicans who see the debt ceiling as an inviting hostage and government shutdowns are a fun thing to do make them nervous so maximizing their influence in the party that is not home to Louie Gohmert is an obvious play for them to make but that’s all it really is. Don’t expect the New Dems to admit any of this though. If a Democratic party more in line with its voters  on economic issue can win (and it can) what’s the point of organizations like Third Way?

As the 1984 fable is meant to scare progressives and Democrats who basically agree with Elizabeth Warren away from asserting themselves, it’s worth saying that for those who lived through the 80’s losses (disclosure: they started before my time), losing 49 states and having the Mondale story be something Everyone Knows in DC had to seem either convincing or daunting to confront even for those who may have suspected it of being of dubious origin. Even the most committed progressive Democrat would have had a lot of thinking to do and mitigation must have had a lot of appeal. Russ Feingold is no one’s idea of a slouch in the political courage department but as he made the early rounds for a presidential run that he ultimately did not make in the 2008 cycle, his answer to the national media about his ability to win a general election nodded to the prevailing wisdom by saying that although the New Dem lesson might have applied in the 80’s and 90’s he did not think it still held up in the way it may have before. In Democratic circles the stalwarts of New Dem-ism (Pat Caddell, Dick Morris, Mark Penn) are seen as punchlines even as the edifice they built is treated with undue reverence. It’s natural for people who experienced 1984 and the fallout from it to not want to face the prospect that they’ve acted in fear of what amounts to a paper tiger. But that fear would only be something for a progressive to be ashamed of if it continues to the point that it determines course of action once one realizes what the beast we’re asked to cower before is made of.

There’s always going to be a place in DC for those who are paid to translate the seething anger financial sector donors have for Elizabeth Warren into something they can attempt be pass off as honest, well-intentioned advice to Democrats. There will probably always be someone who seeks to show how Very Savvy they are by coming to the conclusion that progressives should live in perpetual fear of their own shadow and then searching for developments to apply their conclusion to.  The same can probably be said of the vast majority of the pundits who parrot the talking points of Third Way en route to patting themselves on the back for committing an act of Beltway centrism. All of this is to be expected. Its existence should not, however, be a deterrent.

Progressives’ willingness to challenge entrenched corporate interests has been tempered by a sensitivity to strategic imperatives, both real and imagined. The alertness to strategic imperatives is certainly not a bad thing, but it turns inimical if exploited by agents of corporate interests who share with liberals a nominal party but not really their values-- and definitely not their goals. We know that they are more than willing to craft disingenuous appeals to liberals’ sense of caution. Nor is their anything wrong with hearing out the New Dems’ strategy arguments so long as all Democrats are aware of their track record and bottom line motivation. Over the course of the Obama presidency there have been many real time debates about strategic choices involving Third Way.

Press them for an example of their pronouncements that was vindicated in a real time debate, and they won’t be able to produce one. What they have done is, on a number of instances, shamelessly changed their rationale for why elected Democrats need to do what Third Way’s donors wanted Democrats to do. They do this because New Dems organizations like Third Way are not on a mission to get Democrats to win elections. They’re on a mission to lock Democrats into serving high finance, even at the expense of winning elections. The New Dems are not acting out of concern that progressive populist Democrats will lose. They don’t want liberals to win.

Meanwhile, the DCCC and DSCC are busy recruiting New Dems for viable races in 2016-- garbage like Patrick Murphy for Marco Rubio's Senate seat in Florida and 3 dreadful conservatives for Illinois's shaky seat, for example. And even in deep blue Maryland, the Democratic Establishment is ignoring Donna Edwards in favor of moderate hack Chris Van Hollen, who famously admitted that he's open to cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, a standard GOP/New Dem talking point. In the House, the DCCC is getting behind conservative, lobbyist-friendly shills for Big Business like Isidore Hall (CA), Monica Vernon (IA), Pete Gallego (TX) and dozens of other careerist hacks.

The New Dems And Backward Trade Policies-- TPP

Wall Street and Big Business, usually thought of as an integral part of the Republican Party, finances The New Dem faction of the House Democratic caucus to ensure that they have their fingers in the internal affairs of both parties. Currently there are 46 New Dems in the House and, generally speaking, they tend to be the most conservative Democrats in the House, the ones who back corporate/Wall Street policies and the Republican agenda. Among the 20 Democrats who vote most frequently with the GOP on crucial roll calls are 13 reactionary New Dems-- Gwen Graham (FL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Brad Ashford (NE), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Scott Peters (CA), Ami Bera (CA), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Filemon Vela (TX), Pete Aguilar (CA), Jim Cooper (TN), Bill Foster (IL), and Kurt Schrader (OR).

Yesterday there were 3 votes on the Obama/Boehner/Wall Street trade agenda. First, on Thursday, the House voted on the rule to allow the votes to go forward. It only barely passed, 217-212, only 8 Democrats, 5 of whom are New Dems, voting with the GOP majority for it. Yesterday afternoon's first bill derailed the whole process. This was the one that pushed forward blatantly stealing $700 million from Medicare to pay for job retraining for workers displaced by TPP's job-killing agenda. You'd think no self-respecting Democrats would even consider voting for this massive turd. 144 Democrats followed Pelosi (and their own consciences) to vote NO while 40 Democrats-- overwhelmingly New Dems and Blue Dogs-- followed Hoyer and Israel over to the Dark Side with the 86 Republicans. The final vote against it was 126-302. The 40 Democrats willing to wreck Medicare included New Dem Chairman Ron Kind (WI) plus all 5 of his vice-Chairs, Gerry Connolly (VA), Susan Davis (CA), Jim Himes (CT), Jared Polis (CO) and John Carney (DE). In all, of the 40 walking-dead Dems, over half were New Dems:

• Brad Ashford (New Dem-NE)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Don Beyer (New Dem-VA)
• John Carney (New Dem-DE)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Cooper (New Dem-TN)
• Susan Davis (New Dem-CA)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Suzan DelBene (New Dem-WA)
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)
• Denny Heck (New Dem-WA)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Rick Larsen (New Dem-WA)
• Greg Meeks (New Dem-NY)
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Jared Polis (New Dem-CO)
• Mike Quigley (New Dem-IL)
• Kathleen Rice (New Dem-NY)
• Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA)
• Kurt Schrader (New Dem-OR)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL)

Two New Dems missed the vote-- Andre Carson (IN) and Juan Vargas (CA)-- and 17 New Dems were generally too scared of primaries to dare betray their own constituents on a bill with this high a national profile: Pete Aguilar (CA), Lois Capps (CA), Tony Cárdenas (CA), Joaquin Castro (TX), Joe Courtney (CT), Eliot Engel (NY), Elizabeth Esty (CT), Gwen Graham (FL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Anne Kuster (NH), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Patrick Murphy (FL), Loretta Sanchez (CA), Adam Schiff (CA), David Scott (GA), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Filemon Vela (TX).

The New Dems are a cancer inside the Democratic Party. Grassroots voters should annihilate them as thoroughly as they annihilated their spiritual forefathers, the contemptible Blue Dogs. They are the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party and are consistently up to no good. There's a page for people who like seeing toxic Republicans, New Dems and Blue Dogs hunted down and defeated at the polls.

As Charles Pierce pointed out so eloquently yesterday for Esquire, You can't really understand what happened-- or appreciate what may happen next-- without taking into account the transformative effect of the economic collapse of 2008 on our politics. There now is a legitimate progressive power base within the Democratic party that no longer takes the prerogatives of the corporate class as inviolable, and that must be considered seriously by any Democratic president and by any Democratic politician. (I wouldn't have threatened primaries were I Democracy For America, but I'd also be hard-pressed not to admit it might've worked.) This is not a failure of presidential leadership. It's the assertion of political power from another direction. If that unnerves the Green Room consensus, that's too bad. The president got a bad beat, not because he is a bad president, but because, on this issue, on this Friday afternoon, he found himself trying to sell something to a constituency that has changed. I think he has the good sense to realize this and to adjust his strategy accordingly. At the very least, he will realize that what happened to him and to his agenda today was a long time coming."

Zach Carter at HuffPo shed as much light on what happened and may happen as Pierce did:

Supporters of President Barack Obama's trade agenda are searching for a new legislative strategy following Friday's embarrassing defeat. But at least one proposed tactic bouncing around Capitol Hill won't work-- simply jettisoning a key package of aid to displaced workers that Democrats just voted down.

Democrats have long supported that program, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, which provides job training and financial aid to workers who lose their jobs as a result of foreign trade deals. By voting en masse against the program on Friday, Democrats were effectively shooting the hostage. Republicans had tied passage of the TAA package to another much broader fast-track trade bill to streamline trade agreements. The bill for fast-track, known as Trade Promotion Authority, is considered essential to passing a series of trade pacts that Democrats broadly oppose. By knocking down TAA, Democrats derailed a massive trade pact sought by Obama and Republican leaders.

That's led to murmurs that Republicans could simply threaten to pass a trade facilitation bill without TAA. The GOP did, after all, demonstrate Friday that it had enough House votes to pass the fast-track bill as stand-alone legislation with a show-vote following the TAA failure. Threatening to do fast-track alone, the reasoning goes, would intimidate Democrats into voting in favor of TAA, and approving the full package.

But House Republicans don't have much leverage on TAA. If they pass a fast-track bill without TAA, the Senate will have to vote on the package in a conference committee. And supporters of Obama's trade agenda don't have the votes to approve a fast-track bill without TAA.

In May, a combined fast-track and TAA package garnered just 62 votes in the Senate-- barely enough to overcome a filibuster. And many of the few Democratic supporters on the Senate side said at the time that they would not vote for a fast-track bill that did not include TAA.

...The overwhelming majority of Democrats, a bloc of tea party Republicans, labor unions, environmental groups and Internet freedom advocates oppose Obama's trade agenda, while Republican leaders and corporate lobbyists with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support it.

UPDATE: Davos Man Headed For Extinction?

In this morning's NY Times, Krugman labeled the Democrats supporting this sick Republican/Wall Street trade agenda the Davos Democrats. He says the White House tells him that TPP is "about geopolitics, they say-- America has to be in the game here lest others (obviously including China) supplant our influence; meanwhile, they argue that the troubling aspects of the deal aren’t as troubling as they sound (they make a decent case on dispute settlement, less so on intellectual property). And they argue that the deal would actually improve labor protections in poor countries. I’m not fully convinced, but this is a reasonable discussion."

But the overall selling of TPP, to some extent by the administration and much more so by its business allies, has been nothing like this. Instead, it has been all lectures from Those Who Know How the Global Economy Works-- the kind of people who go to Davos and participate in earnest panels on the skills gap and the case for putting Alan Simpson in charge of everything-- to the ignorant hippies who don’t. You know, ignorant hippies like Joseph Stiglitz and Elizabeth Warren.

This kind of thing worked in the 1990s, when Davos Man actually did seem to know how the world works. But now Davos Democrats are known as the people who told us to trust unregulated finance and fear invisible bond vigilantes. They just don’t have the credibility to pull off arguments from authority any more. And it doesn’t say much for their perspicacity that they apparently had no idea that the world has changed.

TPP’s Democratic supporters thought they could dictate to their party like it’s 1999. They can’t.

Will Rick Lazio defeat Davos Man in 2016?

Is Dean Phillips A Good Candidate? How Will He Be If He Gets To Congress?

How would a New Dem "repair" the government? Turn it over to the banksters?

Last night one of my favorite candidates of the cycle was in town and we had dinner. He was very enthusiastic about another candidate he had just met in Minnesota, Dean Phillips, the DCCC-favored candidate to take on Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen in the suburbs west of Minneapolis (MN-03), an arc that goes from Bloomington, Edina and Eden Prairie, through Minnetonka, Plymouth and Maple Grove up to Champlin, Brooklyn Park and Coon Rapids. Obama won the district both times and Hillary beat Trump by 9 points. The district's PVI is D+1. Still, Paulsen was reelected with an even bigger margin-- 56.7% to 43%-- than the Clinton win over Trump. He ran against a weak DCCC/EMILY's List centrist candidate, Terri Bonoff. The DCCC spent $3,330,152 attacking Paulsen and Pelosi's SuperPAC threw in another $568,897. And the DCCC wants to make sure it runs another centrist (of course). There are 4 Democrats running but the DCCC isn't waiting for MN-03 DFL voters to pick one; they've already added Phillips to their Red to Blue page in an attempt to clear the field of the other, more progressive, candidates. Voters don't like when the DCCC does this, but the DCCC is incapable of learning anything. They exist in a self-referencing DC bubble and have no understanding of America at all-- which explains why they've been on an uninterrupted losing streak since Pelosi took over.

Phillips' bio says he's the grandson of Dear Abby and that he went to work in the Phillips Distilling Company warehouse and rose to be CEO... albeit without mentioning his dad owned the company. His bio also doesn't mention he's a New Dem. The graphic above is from the DCCC website and the one below is from the New Dems website.

I have to admit, I've never spoken with Phillips and he may be a lovely man. But I do know that the New Dems have very stringent vetting process and they will not endorse anyone who doesn't fit the Wall Street agenda they are all about. Along with the Blue Dogs,the New Dems are the heart and soul of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. An overwhelming number of New Dems, in fact, are also Blue Dogs, and almost every Blue Dog is a New Dem. Good members of Congress-- those fighting for ordinary working families-- are not in the New Dems. The New Dems exist to serve special interests, especially Wall Street special interests.

I met Harley Rouda, one of the candidates running to replace Putin's favorite congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, in Orange County's CA-48, a few months ago. He came over to my house and we had a great chat and he seemed like a personable guy and a decent candidate. Then the New Dems endorsed him and I started viewing him through that prism. He's probably going to win his race-- and he's decidedly better than the DCCC's first choice in that district, Hans Keirstead-- but I already know what his voting record is going to be like in Congress. The New Dems don't endorse people unless they're very sure there won't be any tendencies to be "too" progressive. It's a Wall Street-owned PAC and they don't fool around. So far Rouda, an ex-Republican, has self-funded 60% of his campaign ($730,500). That kind of attitude about buying a congressional seat should always set off alarm bells.

In CA-48, I've spent time-- online, on the phone and in person-- with Laura Oatman, the progressive in the race. My bet is that she's make a much better member of Congress, but she's being drowned out by the 2 New Dems, Harley ($1,225,534) and Hans ($855,340, of which $220,400 is self-funding). Another candidate in that race, carpetbagger Omar Siddiqui, has self-funded 80% of his campaign ($458,498) and campaigns openly as a "Reagan Democrat." Laura's campaign is more of a grassroots effort and she's raised $213,268. Perhaps she's waiting for the DCCC to bigfoot into the campaign against her, a move that could bring her more attention, the same way it did Laura Moser in Houston.

So... back to Minnesota. I don't know the 4 DFL candidates and I'd rather see who MN-03 voters decide the nominee is before wading into that one. The DCCC and New Dems sitting on the scale for Phillips, though, makes me very suspicious that he'd be a terrible member of Congress, just like almost all of the New Dems already in Congress are.

Sunday, DFA sent out an email to their members entitled "Some Democrats just never learn." It was more about Senate Democrats than the House Democrats we usually deal with here at DWT. "Donald Trump's allies in the Senate decided to move forward with the Bank Lobbyist Act, a bill that would massively deregulate the majority of big banks and make it easier for banks to use discriminatory and fraudulent practices," they wrote. "One would think that this would be a no-brainer bill for Democrats to oppose. Democratic voters are not clamoring for bank deregulation-- in fact, quite the opposite. Ten years later, many working families are still recovering from the last financial collapse caused by greedy big banks. But 16 Senate Democrats voted to help destroy key regulations against the big Wall Street banks. This is unacceptable. And it's exactly the type of behavior that could reverse the 'blue wave' Democrats are dreaming of in November. The young voters, voters of color and working families that the Democrats need to turn out this fall want to see representatives who will fight for them-- not give everything away to Wall Street."

That's the New Dem mentality they're railing against. They quoted Elizabeth Warren to illustrate what they're talking about:

"There’s Democratic and Republican support because the lobbyists have been pushing since the first day Dodd-Frank passed to weaken the regulations on these giant banks. People in this building may forget the devastating impact of the financial crisis 10 years ago, but the American people have not forgotten... the millions of people who lost their homes; the millions of people who lost their jobs; the millions of people who lost their savings, they remember and they do not want to turn lose the big banks again."

And, as DFA said-- We can't afford to keep electing Democrats who are bought and owned by Wall Street. We need progressive fighters who will push back on corporate corruption in every sector, from every level of government. If someone is a New Dem or a Blue Dog, you can be very sure they are exactly the problem DFA and Elizabeth Warren are talking about. Don't be fooled again.