I hope you read the post yesterday featuring Thom Harmann's interview with Thomas Frank about how the Democratic Party quite consciously transformed itself from the party of the working class and middle class to the party of the Republican-lite rich professional class. If you didn't, please do... it's important to the foundational narrative we've been developing here are DWT over the last decade.
For all it's faults politically-- its nearly worthless as an electoral vehicle for progressives-- there is one thing the Congressional Progressive caucus gets right: their annual budget.
I was in a state of shock this week. I met with some Democratic insiders and the most insider of all-- after repeating word-for-word the Wall Street/Schumer line of why Alan Grayson must be destroyed-- agreed with my assessment of Debbie Wasserman Schultz... perhaps not the specifics of the case against her, but totally with the conclusion: for the sake of the Democratic Party and for the sake of the country, she must be defeated in the late August primary. Wow! Everyone who voiced an opinion inside this relatively establishment group agreed.
Matt Cartwright moved the grassroots progressive agenda forward yesterdayHillary won all 5 states last Tuesday, although, it's still really too close to call in Missouri, 310.602 to 309,071, a bit over 1,500 votes separating them. Each has been awarded 32 delegates. Illinois was also close... 68 delegates for Hillary and 67 delegates for Bernie. Even Ohio, which was a much bigger win for her, the delegate count was 79 for the establishment and 62 for Bernie. The two Confederate states, of course, were much more strongly in Clinton territory.
In just a few days we'll be looking at the Democratic results from Arizona's primary and the caucuses in Idaho and Utah and at the GOP results in Arizona (winner-take-all), Utah (winner-take-almost-all) and their caucus in Samoa. The media will have something to obsess over that isn't the subject of the inconvenient video just above. Or with inconvenient facts like that damned Ipsos poll showing that Bernie, of all the remaining presidential candidates, is the person most Americans would trust be be commander-in-chief.
An old friend called this morning to tell me he was running for Congress against a right-wing Republican in a fairly red district. He felt he had a chance to win because Hillary is popular in the area and he expected her to have strong coattails. "Bernie too," I offered, an offering which he was dismissive of. And that led to a discussion about what the value is of lifelong Democrats imbued with the progressive values and principles of the Democratic Party.
When then-DCCC head Steve Israel was asked by a reporter for the Omaha World-Herald how he felt about his conservative recruit, Brad Ashford, a Nebraska Republican state senator, getting into Congress as a Democrat and voting far more with the GOP than with the Democrats, Israel responded:
It's as though one day the whole town assembled in the square, and all the nobles and officials took the stage and threw off their masks. What a sight for the people. Masks rising high into the air, like a flock of birds rising from a tree (source; click to enlarge).by Gaius PubliusThis is not about the Nevada caucus or its outcome.
Tuesday night I went to sleep thinking that Wisconsin's most progressive state Senator, Chris Larson, made it into the run-off by coming in second in the race for Milwaukee County Executive (arguably, the second most important elected official in the state after governor). At 4am my phone rang and it was an excited NY-based operative telling me that with all the precincts counted, Larson had won a stunning victory over billionaire right-of-center incumbent-- he inherited the money-- Chris Abele.
American Crossroads letting you know that Goldman Sachs' Blankfein isn't letting you know that he's backing Hillary Clinton — "because I don't want to help or hurt anyone by giving an endorsement." Smiles all round the table.
