PATRICK’s Bay State swing — BAKER to roll out budget plan — NEAL says infrastructure bill could happen
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Showing posts with label DCCC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DCCC. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
POLITICO MASSACHUSETTS PLAYBOOK: PATRICK’s Bay State swing — BAKER to roll out budget plan — NEAL says infrastructure bill could happen
Thursday, October 31, 2019
With Biden Floundering, Democratic Establishment Considers Clinton and Kerry
MORE DNC STUPIDTY!
JOE BIDEN = MR BIG CORPORATIONS, Creepy Uncle Joe and much else.
IGNORE THE DNC AND PLEASE DON'T CONTRIBUTE TO THE DNC OR DCCC!
Support individual candidates who support YOU! Work for their election, volunteer, knock on doors, make phone calls, register voters.
DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT!
Let's change the DNC mindset.
Why did Debbie Wasserman Schultz & the top 3 DNC officials resign as a result of this? Why did the DNC issue a formal apology to Bernie Sanders?? "Although the initial leaks dated from late in the primary, when Hillary Clinton was close to securing the nomination, they revealed the DNC leadership's bias against Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in contradiction with their publicly stated neutrality,[5] as multiple DNC operatives seemed to deride Sanders' campaign and discussed ways to advance Clinton's nomination. Later reveals included controversial DNC–Clinton agreements dated before the primary, regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions.[6] The revelations prompted the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz before the Democratic National Convention.[7] The DNC issued a formal apology to Bernie Sanders and his supporters "for the inexcusable remarks made over email" that did not reflect the DNC's "steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process."[8] After the convention, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned in the wake of the controversy.[9]"
If The New York Times has the right of it, the Democratic establishment is beginning to sweat live bullets over the gaseous anomaly that is the third-try presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden. On Tuesday, the Times ran a hilariously titled piece — “Anxious Democratic Establishment Asks, ‘Is There Anyone Else?’” — in which some possible Biden alternatives were floated: Michael Bloomberg, John Kerry and, of course, Hillary Clinton.
Way to go, Joe.
A little context is in order here. On that same Tuesday, former Ukraine ambassador William Taylor eviscerated Donald Trump’s “no quid pro quo” defense of his Ukraine dealings during a closed-door hearing before the House Oversight Committee that included several Republicans (a fact which should muzzle the mayhem House Republicans unleashed on Wednesday, but probably won’t).
In the face of this damning turn of events, Trump decided it was high time to change the subject by letting his unvarnished racist flag fly free in the breeze. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching,” he tweeted early that morning.
An immediate detonation of outrage justly followed Trump’s decision to equate his own constitutionally appropriate political woes with the generational massacre of Black Americans. Rep. Elijah Cummings passed only days before Trump vomited his vile comment onto the nation’s carpet, but one needs no imagination to know what his reaction would have been.
Joining the chorus of condemnation that day was Joe Biden. “Impeachment is not ‘lynching,’ it is part of our Constitution,” he tweeted on Tuesday afternoon. “Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable.”
It took only a few hours for Biden’s own words to boomerang on him, again. A video clip of Biden describing the Clinton impeachment as a “partisan lynching” went viral, and he was forced to apologize for his choice of language. “This wasn’t the right word to use and I’m sorry about that,” he tweeted that same night.
Abhorrent. Despicable. Utterly predictable.
Joe Biden’s Senate career spanned from 1973 to 2008, a 45-year run that saw him take a number of praiseworthy actions that were brutally offset by a larger number of genuinely terrible actions. Salted throughout his long career are enough verbal car accidents to leave the general impression that “Gaffe” is his middle name.
His 1988 presidential campaign collapsed in the shame and disgrace of a plagiarism scandal that should have been enough to end or at least severely curtail his political career, but Biden was a senator from Delaware, and Delaware is Valhalla for big banks, credit card companies and other massive corporations.
Those entities dug a campaign finance moat around Biden’s Senate seat, chasing off anyone who might challenge him in a primary. This served to protect Biden from his own blunders, allowing him to hold his place for nearly a half-century without experiencing any electoral consequences for his serial missteps. Over those years, Biden has repaid their largesse with interest.
After Biden’s second failed run for president in 2008 ended in the single digits after Iowa, he was rescued from Delawarean obscurity because Barack Obama needed him on the ticket to appease white establishment voters, and for the money he could bring in because he has the financial industry on speed dial.
Somehow, this long and badly damaged resume has been translated into a belief within Democratic establishment circles that Joe Biden is the only candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in 2020. Now, as his third and presumably last run for the Oval Office sputters visibly, that belief is being sorely tested.
Biden’s “lynching” calamity is telling: The rank offensiveness of Trump’s horrid comment was clear and unequivocal… until yet another verbal ghost from Biden’s past rattled its chains and blew up the narrative. It has happened before, it will happen again, and the members of the Democratic establishment are finally beginning to figure that out. This begs the question: What’s their ultimate motive?
In a recent meeting of influential Democratic donors, according to the Times, unease over Biden’s lackluster campaigning turned the conversation to some well-worn political retreads who could conceivably be lured into the race: “Would Hillary Clinton get in, the contributors wondered, and how about Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor?”
Several of the candidates mentioned in the Times piece seemed unsure their entry would garner much interest, which is at minimum a credit to their clarity of thought. Other old-guard Democrats are more certain in their opinion. “She’s done a great service to our country and public service and I supported her wholeheartedly,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of a possible Clinton candidacy, “but I believe it’s time for another nominee.”
“Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bloomberg have both told people privately in recent weeks that if they thought they could win, they would consider entering the primary — but that they were skeptical there would be an opening,” reads the Times piece. “Former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who associates say has wondered aloud about whether he should have run and has found it hard to watch Mr. Biden’s missteps, has also been urged to get in.”
Endeavoring to make sense of the establishment’s line of thinking on this is like trying to see to the bottom of a cowflop. Faced with the possible re-election of a president who represents an existential threat to democracy in the U.S., the Democratic establishment apparently believes the solution lies with a Wall Street billionaire, a man who lost to George W. Bush, or a woman who already lost once to that same existential threat.
This potential scenario sets up a rather dizzying Hobson’s Choice for progressive voters who don’t think Biden, much less any of the others mentioned by the Times, are the cure for what ails us.
If those voters are effective in thwarting Biden’s quest for the nomination, it could invite the entry of any or all of the Times’ anointed trio. If those voters are not effective in thwarting Biden, he could stumble into the nomination by dint of name recognition. Of course, Biden to this point has not needed much assistance in spiking the tires on his own campaign bus, but the situation is frustrating enough to invite despair.
Bernie Sanders is an FDR Democrat straight out of central casting. Elizabeth Warren is an enthusiastic capitalist. Pete Buttigieg has practically taken to wearing a “Yes I Am A Centrist” sign around his neck as he fishes for freaked-out would-be Biden voters. What is it exactly about this wide field of non-Biden candidates that is so terrifying to the Democratic establishment that they would even consider dumping Bloomberg and/or two previously defeated also-rans into an already crowded race?
Guessing is a hazardous undertaking in matters of such grievous import, but I’m going to toss one on the stoop and see if the cat laps it up, because it is starting to feel very 1972 around here… and not in the way establishment Democrats remember it.
In 1972, the Democratic Party was controlled by old-school political bosses like Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and AFL-CIO president George Meany. Their preferred candidates that year were Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine or Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, because both Muskie and Humphrey were thoroughly beholden to the party machine.
George McGovern, a liberal senator from South Dakota (yes, such a thing did exist once) blew their plans up by winning the nomination, however, which threatened to end Daley and Meany’s stranglehold on the party. Daley and Meany — the 1972 version of the Democratic establishment — decided four more years of Richard Nixon would be preferable to handing the party over to an antiwar “radical” like McGovern. They sat on their hands for the remainder of the election, and Nixon went on to win by a historic landslide.
Would McGovern have won with Daley and Meany’s help? Probably not, given the massive unforced error he made in choosing Missouri Sen. Tom Eagleton as a running mate before dumping him and throwing a sop to the establishment by tapping Sargent Shriver. But the fact that the Democratic establishment of that day chose a lawless Republican president over a good and decent Democratic senator in order to maintain control of the party gives me cold sweats.
Today’s Democratic establishment hears that story and says, “See? You can’t nominate anyone who is too far to the left!” I see that story and think of the old bulls from the fabled tale, who won’t leave until they get run off.
The old bulls of today’s Democratic establishment are bereft of new ideas, and cling to their vividly failed policies and beaten candidates with frustrating vigor. As in ’72, they seem more focused on maintaining control of the party than in defeating Donald Trump in 2020. If they pull a similar stunt this time around because they fear a party run by someone outside their calcified little circle of power, you may as well hand the election to Trump the November after next.
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
The Democratic Establishment's Culpability in the Death of ThinkProgress
11 September 19
We do not need very much money to run RSN at a high level. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we are talking to people who are pretty reluctant to donate.
The problem begins and ends with the difference between how many people we serve and how many contribute.
The difference is huge.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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11 September 19 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation!
The Democratic Establishment's Culpability in the Death of ThinkProgress
 Activist Facts Excerpt: "The Center for American Progress (CAP) and its parallel advocacy arm the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAP Action) are two key cogs in the left-wing policy and message machine. Using the institutional imprimatur of CAP's 'think tank' and CAP Action's blog ThinkProgress, CAP's directors and funders - who include left-wing hedge fund titan George Soros - attempt to move national policy debates ever leftward." EXCERPT: In that light, you can almost see the shuttering of ThinkProgress—and the attempt to relaunch a neutered version—as a skirmish in the battle being fought over many of the other institutions that collectively make up what we imprecisely call “The Democratic Party.” It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that the independent media arm of the Center for American Progress was deemed inessential around the same time that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee codified (and hardened) its policy of blackballing vendors who work for primary challengers, around the same time that the head of the Democratic National Committee went to the mat to prevent presidential candidates from participating in a climate debate, and so on and so on. Certain forces are reasserting control and freezing out the insurgents and rabble-rousers in advance of a critical election year. This is the last, best chance to effect Trump’s removal, and those who command these institutions can no longer abide the heretics they once tolerated. READ MORE  Charles Kupperman. (photo: Larry Downing/Reuters) ALSO SEE: John Bolton's Fill-In Was Condemned for Ties to Islamophobic Group
Charles Kupperman: A Bolton-Style Hawk Is Trump's Acting National Security Advisor
teleSUR Excerpt: "Out with the old, in with the same? This seems to be the case as the White House informed Tuesday that Charles Kupperman will be serving as acting National Security Advisor to replace sacked John Bolton." EXCERPT: Kupperman, 68, is a longtime defense contractor executive and neoconservative policy campaigner.
Kupperman served as vice president of Lockheed Martin’s missile defense sector and then as vice president of Boeing’s strategic operations and missile defense operations, a post he retired from in 2006.
Despite the years, he has maintained a conservative borderline far-right stance, as in recently from 2001 to 2010, he served on the board of directors of the Center for Security Policy, an anti-Muslim think tank led by Frank Gaffney Jr. that promotes aggressive missile defense programs and militarist policies.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based hate monitor, designates the CSP as an anti-Muslim hate group, pointing to the group's promotion of conspiracy theories claiming that Muslims have infiltrated the U.S. government and seek to establish Islamic law in the country.
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Charles M. Kupperman, the newly appointed deputy national security adviser, previously served on the board of directors for the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy. bit.ly/2st6vQu
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U.S. Special Operations personnel prepare to board a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during a mission in Afghanistan. (photo: U.S. Department of Defense)
"A More Volatile and Dangerous World": The Legacy of 9/11 and America's "Forever Wars"
George Herring, Lexington Herald Leader
Herring writes: "It has been nearly 20 years since that fateful day we now call simply 9/11. We are still living with its consequences."
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George Herring, Lexington Herald Leader
Herring writes: "It has been nearly 20 years since that fateful day we now call simply 9/11. We are still living with its consequences."
READ MORE
Demonstrators protest outside an ICE office in New Orleans on Monday, Sept. 9, 2019. (photo: Bryn Stole
Activists Arrested at New Orleans ICE Offices After Protesting Pending Deportation of Ill Cuban Man
Bryn Stole, NOLA
Stole writes: "Dozens of demonstrators picketed outside U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement's New Orleans Field Office and blocked traffic on Loyola Avenue for about a half-hour Monday in a protest against the pending deportation of a Cuban asylum seeker with severe health issues."
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Bryn Stole, NOLA
Stole writes: "Dozens of demonstrators picketed outside U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement's New Orleans Field Office and blocked traffic on Loyola Avenue for about a half-hour Monday in a protest against the pending deportation of a Cuban asylum seeker with severe health issues."
READ MORE
A corn farmer. (photo: Austin Public Library)
For Rural America, Medicare for All Is a Matter of Life or Death
Barb Kalbach, Guardian UK
Kalbach writes: "Insurance firms are gobbling up airtime in Iowa to attack Medicare for All. They claim it would hurt the very same hospitals their business model has spent years bleeding dry."
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Barb Kalbach, Guardian UK
Kalbach writes: "Insurance firms are gobbling up airtime in Iowa to attack Medicare for All. They claim it would hurt the very same hospitals their business model has spent years bleeding dry."
READ MORE
Hundreds of people who were displaced by Hurricane Dorian gather at a port that was turned into a distribution and evacuation centre in Marsh Harbour, Bahamas. (photo: Carolyn Van Houten/Getty Images
Desperation Mounts in Bahamas as Shelters Turn Survivors Away
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Desperation mounted in the Bahamas on Tuesday as Hurricane Dorian survivors arriving in the capital by boat and plane were turned away from overflowing shelters."
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Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Desperation mounted in the Bahamas on Tuesday as Hurricane Dorian survivors arriving in the capital by boat and plane were turned away from overflowing shelters."
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A new report recommends five specific areas in which to invest. (photo: Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
5 Ways We Need to Adapt to Climate Change - or Pay the Price
Paola Rosa-Aquino, Grist
Rosa-Aquino writes: "New findings suggest that the world needs to devote an urgent effort to adapt to the changes that are already on the horizon."
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Paola Rosa-Aquino, Grist
Rosa-Aquino writes: "New findings suggest that the world needs to devote an urgent effort to adapt to the changes that are already on the horizon."
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