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Patrick Martin researched and wrote an important series of articles on the crop of Democratic candidates for House races this year. His findings reveal a major shift "from being the party for the Pentagon and CIA to become the party of the Pentagon and CIA". Martin is a senior writer for the World Socialist Web Site, and you can read his 3-part series here.
Martin starts with a comment about internet censorship, and how Google's efforts to screen out "fake news" have sharply reduced search referrals to WSWS and many other independent media outlets.
His interest in the large contingent of former spies, soldiers and diplomats in the ranks of Democratic challengers in House races this year started with an item in the Washington Post about one such candidate. Martin explains his methodology: he looked up the candidates on the Federal Elections Commission website, and selected all Democratic challengers who had raised at least $100,000 by the end of 2017, plus a few who showed other indications of viability. Then he visited the campaign web sites of the candidates, and only used quotes from their bios to describe their links to the military/intelligence complex.
As you'll hear, his findings are remarkable. The largest subgroup of Democratic challengers are people with military/intel backgrounds (57 out of 221), exceeding the usual leading category of local/state elected officials (45 of 221). In one Texas district, voters could choose from 3 candidates with these connections.
Other findings: the highest concentration of these candidates is in the northeast; there are many close associates of the Clintons running this year; progressives who align with Bernie Sanders are outnumbered.
Martin will be sharing a spreadsheet soon with more information, and it will be posted here when it's available.
Thanks to listener and subscriber Carl Howard for the original tip on this report!
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