Republican wing of the Democratic Party

I admit I hadn't heard about David Doel's show, the Rational National before. But here are two from consecutive days last week-- one up top and one at the bottom-- and he's talking about the same thing we were on those same days-- attacks on Bernie by the Wall Street Democrats, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. I went so far as to list-- in the Meet The Scumbags section of this post-- the members of the Third Way Board of Directors and their Wall Street origins.

Blue Dogs say they can work with this in a bipartisan wayIt's silly to called Blue Dogs, the right-wing fringe of the Democratic Party (AKA, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party) "moderate." They're not moderate; they're conservative-- and more than anything else, they're corrupt, When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Courtesy of Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)You know how important everyone agreed passage of the Farm Bill was for the lame duck, right? A must pass bi-partisan bill. The murderous GOP took advantage of that and slipped a little clause into the rule for the bill that denies a vote on the Yemen resolution.

It would be a tragic mistake for Democrats to pick a 2020 nominee based solely on ousting Trump. Electability is always an important consideration but it should never-- not even now-- be the only consideration. Almost any reasonably decent candidate should be able to beat Trump. It's not about them; it's not even about Trump. It's about us. Is there a candidate offering us something we want from our government?

Nerdy Van Nerdwinkle (WA), new New Dem chairMany 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.

The Ugly Face of the TakeoverDuring the this cycle’s primary season, first Marie Newman (Chicago), then Alan Grayson (Orlando) and then Matt Heinz (Tucson) were all calling on the media to look into and report how Rupert Murdoch and his family and a handful of other right-wing billionaires were funneling immense sums of money into a

Sit in at his office didn't prevent Costa from voting with the GOP for TPPI'm not being coy-- you know me better than that-- and I wish I could remember her name, but I can't even remember for sure if I heard her on the radio while I was driving or on TV in the next room while I was working. She truly exemplifies everything wrong with unlicensed political punditry.

Republicans aren't the only ones who gerrymander states to create safe partisan majorities for themselves. The Democratic Party-controlled Illinois legislature did the same thing. And one of the congressional seats they carved out in a pretty red area is the 17th district abutting eastern Iowa and southern Wisconsin. The legislators carefully-- and awkwardly-- included Rockford and Peoria to give a Democrat the margin of victory they need.

One New Dem leader down, another one to goI just got back from a post-election rest in Istanbul. On Saturday I was still there and I dashed off a post about how Blue America is going about looking for 2020 congressional recruits. That generated a ton of e-mails like this one [in part] from Melissa in Houston:

It would have made more sense for Matheson and McAdams to run as Republicans[Note: This post is for progressives, not for garden variety Democrats or corporatists.] There’s one district in Utah-- the 4th-- that looks winnable for a Democrat. The last Democrat from the district, Jim Matheson, was an ultra-reactionary Blue Dog who made a career out of voting with the Republicans on crucial matters.