Platner

This appears to be catastrophic.

Whether he stays in or drops out it's a clusterf%$#.

If he stays in, he's a crippled candidate, and if he is replaced by one of the usual suspects by the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) it will demoralize a significant portion of potential Democratic voters.

One of the biggest challenges in the November elections is that voters will choose the couch (aka JD Vance's girlfriend) over the voting booth, and I do not see how this won't make this more likely regardless of final outcome. 

If he drops out, and he is replaced with Janet Mills or someone of her ilk, that would just make a bad situation much worse, but this won't stop the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) from doing just that.

It's the Iron Law of Institutions, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution." (Not my idea or term, this term was coined by Jon Schwarz) 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Winning isn't the Democratic Party's goal, winning without the left is. Until that changes, get ready for a lot more losing https://t.co/rmRsWj3glZ

— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) September 4, 2025

This is, to quote Charles Dickens, "Truer than taxes."

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is in opposition to the Republican Party, but thety are the ENEMY of progressives.

Donate to candidates,and not the DNC, DCCC, or DSCC.

It's the Iron Law of Institutions

After winning the Democratic Party primary for Mayor of New York, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) continues to shill for corrupt sexual harasser and grandma murderer Andrew Cuomo, because they see Zohran Mamdani as a threat to their own power within the party

Just to remind you, the Iron Law of Institutions is, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution."

And folks like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and  House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are still trying to make Andrew Cuomo mayor, because all they know how to do is suck up to big donors.

In the weeks after he won the 2021 Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, Eric Adams was enthusiastically embraced by the party’s establishment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi posed for a picture with Adams and described herself as “honored” to host him at a meeting of House Democrats. He was seated near President Biden at a White House session. “Why Top Democrats Are Listening to Eric Adams Right Now” was the headline of a New York Times story.

Four years later, Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral Democratic primary in the Big Apple by a larger margin than Adams, with far more overall votes, and on the strength of a spectacular campaign that inspired young voters across the country. But the party’s establishment is dissing him. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, hugely influential figures in both New York and national politics, have refused to endorse Mamdani. Same for the state’s other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Governor Kathy Hochul. Many prominent national Democrats, such as Rahm Emanuel and Cory Booker, are also either criticizing Mamdani or refusing to back him. It was considered a coup for Mamdani when it was reported that he and Barack Obama had a lengthy and positive phone call. But the former president hasn’t actually publicly announced his support for Mamdani, either.

The shunning of Mamdani is an important illustration of the state of the Democratic Party in 2025. It shows some unfortunate truths about the party’s center-left establishment and points to some clear steps progressives must take.

A minor correction here, Schumer, Obama, Jeffries, Gillibrand, Hochul Emanuel, Booker, and the rest of their ilk are not center left.

They are, and always have been, corporate stooges.

Let me move to what I suspect are their actual reasons for the cold shoulder Mamdani is receiving. First, many center-left [Again, not left at all.  At best center-right] Democratic strategists and lawmakers fear that prominent progressives tar the entire party as overly left-wing. So they don’t want a socialist to become mayor of New York City and certainly would not endorse that person and encourage his victory.

………

As party leaders, Jeffries and Schumer in particular may view their roles as appealing to the median voter across the country. That’s reasonable. If their position is that they can’t associate themselves with Mandami because he is too far left for swing voters outside New York, they should state that explicitly (or at least have their aides leak it). That way, they are not implying that Mamdani has policies so radical that he can’t be endorsed even for New York City. It would also end the drama around their refusal to endorse Mandami. If their primary considerations are swing voters far away, they have little reason to back Mamdani, no matter what he promises them. 

But I doubt the wariness of Mamdani is entirely about electability and party positioning nationally. I worry that Jeffries, Schumer, Gillibrand, and perhaps more importantly their campaign donors simply oppose someone as progressive as Mamdani holding office, particularly one as prestigious as mayor of New York. 

………

The Democratic Party is so ideologically diverse these days, from Rashida Tlaib to Jared Golden, that there are bound to be conflicts. But not every disagreement is legitimate. There is no good reason for Jeffries, Schumer, or Gillibrand to refuse to support Mamdani, an inspiring candidate who won the primary and is willing to work with people to his right, particularly when his opponents are the ethically challenged Adams and Cuomo. Party leaders are dead wrong here—and their terrible instincts in New York are a reflection of their broader shortcomings.  

How about primarying Jeffries? That would be a good start.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) says, "Vote Blue, No Matter Who," whenever a right wing corrupt creep like Rahm Emanuel gets a nomination, but when someone with actual ideas and political acumen shows up, they line up on the other side.

Unless and until progressives in the Democratic Party understand that electing a bad Democrat is almost as bad as electing a (any) Republican, and are willing to stay home rather than vote for Blue Dogs, New Democrats, and their ilk, this will never change, and it has to change.

Headline of the Day

Democrats Need Primaries, Maybe Even Gladiatorial Combat

—Stephen Robinson

This is unbelievably true, and David Hogg is a hero for supporting this:

Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg announced his support last week for primary challenges against incumbents in safe seats who he felt aren’t rising to the occasion during Donald Trump’s second nightmare term.

This is an obviously controversial position for a DNC official, and it resulted in predictable backlash. Charles Pierce at Esquire wrote, “The one thing that this time in history doesn’t need is a well-financed primary campaign against safe incumbents.”

With respect to Mr. Pierce, this is the most appropriate time for primary challenges. Democrats lost the presidency, the House, and the Senate. No winning occurred. When a sports team has suffered major losses, you don’t stop having training drills because you’re worried that they’ll be too tired for the actual game. (Besides, Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman all held “safe” seats and still faced primary challenges in 2024.)

DNC vice chair Malcolm Kenyatta announced in February that Democrats should “get to work rebuilding our party: for our future and for our working families!” In the private sector, when an executive talks about “rebuilding” the company, that usually means employees should update their resumes or at least explain what it is they do here. However, in Democratic politics, “rebuilding” apparently means a new coat of paint on a crumbling edifice.

I would add the adjective, "Geriatric," to, "Edifice," but otherwise I agree.

The Democratic Party is currently a failed institution, and without tossing out the consultants, careerist, grifters and leeches that constitute the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), nothing will be fixed.

File Under, "Well Duh"

Well, knock me over with a sledgehammer,it appears that Kamala Harris' Presidential campaign was an orgy of looting by consultants and campaign members.

This sort of behavior has been one of my primary complaints about the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is the extreme corruption of its professional political apparatus.

After Harris's catastrophic flame-out, other people are noticing:

In the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat, recriminations have flourished inside the Democratic Party with different factions blaming different policies or groups to explain the loss. Critics, however, describe a deeper structural problem with how the modern Democratic Party runs campaigns, which lines the pockets of party insiders, bloats campaign budgets and boxes out influences from outside party elites.

The Harris campaign broke campaign finance records, raising nearly a billion dollars, but ending the race $20 million in debt, spending millions on consultants and hundreds of millions of dollars on paid media.

While most political strategists agree that some spending on paid media is necessary to win a campaign in 2024, Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told Salon that the Harris campaign's spending profile is indicative of a structural issue with how the Democratic Party approaches paid media and political strategy.

Snipping the bit where Mr. Shakir talks about how political consultants see the 30 second ad as the Alpha and Omega for campaign communications, because that is what the consultants themselves say, and because it's really not the core problem.

Consultants get a percentage of media buys, and so extract a personal financial benefit from this strategy.

………

Shakir summed up the issue saying that “there is often a product problem and not a sales problem” with Democratic campaigns. However, there is another side to the problem with paid media, in Shakir’s view. At every step in the process of making an ad, everyone is taking their cut.

“The opportunity to make money off of the firm that has created 30-second ads and the person who has placed the ads is ripe for abuse because there are hundreds of millions of dollars going into it and everyone is taking their skim,” Shakir said. “There’s a huge escalation every step of the way because of a skim at every level.” 

According to Shakir, it doesn’t have to work this way but media firms and campaigns often push for more expensive production strategies like more shoots, or oversaturating airwaves, because it’s an opportunity for everyone to get paid. In some cases, Shakir said, even senior campaign staff will get a cut of ad spending.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah, that's a level of self dealing that surprises me, 

Once again, reality trumps (pun not intended) my worst imaginings.

………

Reviewing the ad spending from the Harris campaign, it’s clear that the bulk of the money was funneled through firms run or owned by Democratic Party insiders. For example, Media Buying and Analytics LLC, received upwards of $281 million for media production and ad buys from the Harris campaign in the 2024 cycle and is owned by Canal Media Partners, according to Business Insider, a firm that has worked with hundreds of Democratic campaigns and was founded by Bobby Khan, who has been in and out of Democratic politics since the early 1990s. 

………

According to Shakir, however, the problems with the Democratic Party’s structure and the way it runs campaigns go beyond just media consultants and the party’s love of paid ads. The core issue, as Shakir puts it, is that the party political operations are a closed loop with well-off consultants, politicians and donors all taking advice from each other with little outside input.

So the problem with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is a pervasive culture of corruption among the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment)?  Say it isn't so!

This is a feature, not a bug.

This is a racket, and it is a well functioning racket whose goal is to separate political donors from their money.

Winning or losing is irrelevant to this.

This is just a fact of Iron Law of Institutions which is, as I have noted many times, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution." (Not my idea or term, this term was coined by Jon Schwarz)

 

Headline of the Day

The Democrats Committed Suicide This Year

—James K. Galbraith

Galbraith is right.

He notes Trump's victory netted him as many votes as he got in 2020, while Kamala Harris got 10 million fewer votes than Biden.

It's well worth the read, but I want to note two quotes.  The first is is, "Those who went to the polls appear to have voted as they did last time. There are always a few “swing voters,” but there is a reason reporters seek them out in the way that anthropologists once sought out cannibals: they are rare."

The second is more important to my mind, and somewhat longer:

The Democratic leadership engineered this situation and must therefore desire it. Win or lose, it remains in control of a vast shadow apparatus: consultants, pollsters, lobbyists, fundraisers, key positions on Capitol Hill. Any concessions to new forces within the party would undermine this control, whereas losses to Republicans do not. The Democratic leadership would far rather lose an election or two – or even become a permanent minority party – than open the party to people it cannot control.

The 2024 election was, therefore, a suicide. The Democratic leadership was, at best, indifferent to the erosion of voting access, negligent in retaining 2020’s new voters, and proactive in ensuring the abstention of what little remains of its “left” wing. It tried to cover this up, as usual, with celebrity endorsements and identity politics. As usual, it did not work. But the party’s mandarins and their apparatchiks will be around next time to try again. 

This is a description of what I call the Iron Law of Institutions. which is, as I have noted many times, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution." (Not my idea or term, this term was coined by Jon Schwarz)

They'll Preside Over the Ruins

Over at The Nation, Jeet Heer demands that we hold the corrupt and incompetent Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) accountable.

Nah Gah Nah Happen.

This is not just power, there are a whole class of people at the top of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) whose living depends on the incompetence and corruption to continue, and, to quote the great Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

They would rather rule over a a Democratic Party in shambles then lose their power over the party.  

The title is the Boies Penrose quote.  When he was accused of destroying the Republican Party in Pennsylvanie to preserve his power within the party, he replied, "Yes, but I’ll preside over the ruins.."

While the presidential election wasn’t called until early Wednesday morning, by midnight the overwhelming evidence was that the Democrats were heading for a catastrophe on par with 2016. Donald Trump was already leading in all the battleground states; Republicans were poised to win the Senate, and the House of Representatives remains agonizingly close. There is a real danger of a Republican trifecta once the last votes are counted. It also appears that Donald Trump has won the popular vote—something he failed to do in his first two runs for the presidency.

Trump is now in a position to do enormous damage during his second term in office. We can expect that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will resign from the Supreme Court soo—and be replaced by much younger right-wing ideologues of the same ilk. This would ensure a right-wing stranglehold on the highest court in America for another generation. Trump will also be able to renew his tax cut of 2017, ensuring that trillions of dollars in wealth will be kept by billionaires rather than taxed for the benefit of the country. Trump will also be able to implement the extremist agenda of Project 2025, a plan to remake the American government along plutocratic lines.

Aside from Vladimir Putin, other alleged culprits for Trump’s victory included Bernie bros who allegedly sat out the election in spite, James Comey for releasing two letters about the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton, the media for overplaying the Clinton e-mail story and giving Trump too much airtime, and the general bigotry of the American public. While some of these factors did play a part in Trump’s victory, they functioned mainly as distractions from the inconvenient—to the party elite—truth that Clinton and the Democrats bore a much greater share of the responsibility. Clinton ran an uninspired campaign that focused too much on Trump’s personal foibles, while her party refused to take responsibility for neoliberal policies that had immiserated the American working class. Further, Clinton focused her message so heavily on winning over suburban college-educated voters who were normally Republican, and who in fact overwhelmingly stayed with Trump. This caused her to ignore the much larger number of voters who were working-class and non-college-educated.

………

The main fact of American politics in the post-Obama era is that an ever larger majority of Americans are angry at the status quo and open to anti-system politics. Trump won as the candidate of anti-system anger in 2016. In 2020, he suffered the liability of being the status quo even as Covid was ravaging the world. But by 2024 he was able to return again as the voice of change, bolstered by the fond memories many Americans have of the economy under his presidency—and of the temporary, but generous, expansion of the welfare state under Covid emergency measures.

I believe that this last paragraph is fundamentally wrong.  "Anti-system politics" were present, and in some election cycles ascendant (2010 "shellacking" anyone?), during the Obama administration, but Obama had the good fortune to be facing someone even more establishment than he was in 2012.

In fact, I would argue that "Anti-system politics" as a political force were in large part created by Barack Obama, when he bailed out corrupt and criminal bankers on the backs of ordinary people.

It's no wonder that a large number of voters want to burn everything to the ground.

Hell, I want to burn everything to the ground, nationalize health insurance, prosecute corrupt Supreme Court justices, throw anti-abortion terrorists in jail, and fire every single major political pundit in the country.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Feels like the kind of thing your GOTV teams might recoil at less than a year out from Election Day, but hey, I’m not a strategist!

— Ghost of Toyotathon Sales Event Past (@PanasonicDX4500) December 18, 2023

(BTW, I love this guy's Ecch [Twitter] handle.) 

This is a manifestation of the Iron Law of Institutions. which is, as I have noted many times, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution." 

This is why you routinely see this sort of behavior.  Even if this tactic loses elections, it pushes the left out of positions of power and positions that might eventually lead to power.

The proximate cause of all of this, or my finding this on Atrios, where he calls this, "Going the Full Sinema," and points us to Will Bunch's editorial excoriating Fetterman's recent go along to get along conversion:

“We have started a progressive movement here in Pennsylvania. It’s not going away. This isn’t over. This is not how our story ends.” — John Fetterman on April 26, 2016, after finishing third in a Democratic U.S. Senate primary.

This is how that story ended last week, more than seven years later. Now having achieved his dream of election to the U.S. Senate, and after becoming a leading national figure in the Democratic Party, Fetterman flatly declared in an NBC News interview: “I am not a progressive.”

And the man who once anointed himself leader of the Keystone State’s left-wing movement he now rejects has been busy gathering the receipts to back up that statement. In the same interview. Fetterman — who burst onto the state political scene in 2016 with bold pro-immigration statements, backed by the story of his wife Gisele’s coming to America as a young undocumented migrant from Brazil — said he now supports restrictions on the flow of migrants.

………

All this after Fetterman, who started his rise as the mayor of tiny Braddock in Western Pennsylvania, introduced himself to statewide voters by openly comparing himself to left-wing icon Sen. Bernie Sanders in that 2016 race and then telling progressives again as he successfully ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 and for a year or two after that he was one of them.

“Chip in whatever you can to help us take this progressive momentum all the way to the ballot box on May 15,” Fetterman asked supporters on Twitter, now X, during that 2018 race. That was one of a number of times he explicitly said he was a progressive or endorsed progressive policies or values. In return, core Democrats fueled his decadelong rise from obscurity to Capitol Hill with thousands of small donations, or by knocking on neighbors’ doors.

Now, some of those early supporters say they were betrayed, or even feel lied to. I tried to reach Fetterman this weekend by direct-messaging him on X/Twitter, but have not heard back, at least yet. I wanted the senator to tell me if he’s changed, or if he thinks times have changed — or if something else inspired last week’s declaration. For now, I’ll have to cite his top aide Adam Jentleson, who insists Fetterman “is just being consistent. He spent the entire campaign” — referring to 2022, when Fetterman adopted some more centrist stances like support for fracking — “telling people he wasn’t a down-the-line lefty.”

There is a saying, "Republicans fear their base, and Democrats fear HATE their base."

It could not be more true.

After Studiously Ignoring the Story for 57 Years

The New York Times finally gets around to seriously reporting on the worst kept secret of the era, that Ronald Reagan colluded with the Iranian government against the best interests of the United States for electoral advantage.

This is not a surprise. Nixon used Anna Chennault to sabotage the Vietnam peace talks for the same reason in 1968.

I guess treason is OK if you are a Republican:

It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

Lesson 1:  The people holding power in your organization will always f$#@ you to preserve that power, even if it might damage that organization.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

………

Mr. Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Mr. Barnes would become president someday.

Now I want more information on how George H.W. Bush (Papa, not fils) was involved, because there has been discussion of this for decades.

………

Mr. Barnes identified four living people he said he had confided in over the years: Mark K. Updegrove, president of the L.B.J. Foundation; Tom Johnson, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson (no relation) who later became publisher of the Los Angeles Times and president of CNN; Larry Temple, a former aide to Mr. Connally and Lyndon Johnson; and H.W. Brands, a University of Texas historian.

All four of them confirmed in recent days that Mr. Barnes shared the story with them years ago. “As far as I know, Ben never has lied to me,” Tom Johnson said, a sentiment the others echoed. Mr. Brands included three paragraphs about Mr. Barnes’s recollections in a 2015 biography of Mr. Reagan, but the account generated little public notice at the time.

Records at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum confirm part of Mr. Barnes’s story. An itinerary found this past week in Mr. Connally’s files indicated that he did, in fact, leave Houston on July 18, 1980, for a trip that would take him to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel before returning to Houston on Aug. 11. Mr. Barnes was listed as accompanying him

………

Mr. Barnes recalled joining Mr. Connally in early September to sit down with Mr. Casey to report on their trip during a three-hour meeting in the American Airlines lounge at what was then called the Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport. An entry in Mr. Connally’s calendar found this past week showed that he traveled to Dallas on Sept. 10. A search of Mr. Casey’s archives at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University turned up no documents indicating whether he was in Dallas then or not.

Mr. Barnes said he was certain the point of Mr. Connally’s trip was to get a message to the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. “I’ll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip,” he said. “It wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” Mr. Casey, he added, wanted to know whether “they were going to hold the hostages.”

………

Suspicions about the Reagan camp’s interactions with Iran circulated quietly for years until Gary Sick, a former national security aide to Mr. Carter, published a guest essay in The New York Times in April 1991 advancing the theory, followed by a book, “October Surprise,” published that November.

………

To forestall such a scenario, Mr. Casey was alleged to have met with representatives of Iran in July and August 1980 in Madrid leading to a deal supposedly finalized in Paris in October in which a future Reagan administration would ship arms to Tehran through Israel in exchange for the hostages being held until after the election.

………

Still, a White House memo produced in November 1991 by a lawyer for President George H.W. Bush reported the existence of “a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown.” That memo was not turned over to Mr. Hamilton’s task force and was discovered two decades later by Robert Parry, a journalist who helped produce a “Frontline” documentary on the October surprise.

Reached by telephone this past week, Mr. Sick said he never heard of any involvement by Mr. Connally but saw Mr. Barnes’s account as verifying the broad concerns he had raised. “This is really very interesting and it really does add significantly to the base level of information on this,” Mr. Sick said. “Just the fact that he was doing it and debriefed Casey when he got back means a lot.” The story goes “further than anything that I’ve seen thus far,” he added. “So this is really new.”

………

But as the years have passed, he said, he has often thought an injustice had been done to Mr. Carter. Discussing the trip now, he indicated, was his way of making amends. “I just want history to reflect that Carter got a little bit of a bad deal about the hostages,” he said. “He didn’t have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran.”

So, now we know that they did it, and we know that Bill Casey knew about it.  Now we need to what ever actions were taken, because it's clear that these accusations have some merit, and its equally clear that there would have been other avenues pursued as well.

While we are at it, how about taking Reagan's name off of the airport and the carrier.

Catherine Cortez Masto wins Nevada

Which means that Democrats will retain control of the Senate.

If Warnock wins the runoff, it means that Manchin or Sinema (But not both) can be told to go pound sand.

I will note, as I have before, that this probably would not have been anywhere near as close if the Reid wing of the party had not emptied the state party coffers and paid all the staff to quit when a reformer slate won the party elections last year.

This whole, "But I'll preside over the ruins,"* sh%$ is getting really old:

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto managed to hang on to her seat in a close race that nearly saw her beaten by her Republican adversary, with the result leaving control of the US Senate in the hands of Democrats.

After Democratic senator Mark Kelly’s victory in Arizona on Friday, the party now holds a 50-49 edge in the Senate. The Democratic party will retain control of the chamber, no matter how next month’s Georgia runoff plays out, by virtue of vice-president Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.

………

Nevada’s vote count took several days partly because of the mail voting system created by the state Legislature in 2020 that requires counties to accept ballots postmarked by election day if they arrive up to four days later. Laxalt had an early lead that dwindled after late-counted ballots came in from the state’s population centers in Las Vegas and Reno.

It's good news, but it's a lesson for the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, the corporatist careerists will sabotage you to preserve their power within the institution.

^*Early 1900s Republican Senator Boies Penrose said, when told that his opposition to the reform slate that he would destroy the Pennsylvania state party, replied, "Yes, but I'll preside over the ruins".

F%$# Me, I Agree with Jeff Greenfield

I've always felt that Jeff Greenfield was someone who was more interested in sounding like a deep thinker than he was in actually doing deep thinking, but when he when he evokes George Orwell to criticize the fecklessness of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), I am forced to agree with him, though I think that he misses the big picture as is his wont. 

He sees the problem, but he does not go far enough.

He notes that much of the Democratic Party, particularly the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), is more interested in virtue signaling than getting things done, because they are very well off, and actually addressing inequality would to some degree diminish themselves, particularly among the hoi polloi.

What Greenfield misses, or more accurately is incapable of seeing, is that this is not a blind spot, this a deliberate policy.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) does not want to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted because they ARE the comfortable.

They focus on solipsistic mental masturbation, acts like Nancy Pelosi's now infamous posing wearing a Kente cloth scarf, because there is too much money to be made in making the United States a more unequal and worse place.

Campaign dollars don't raise themselves.

It is why they actively recruit people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, because they need someone to sabotage them, because otherwise they might have to deliver:

The lament is almost old enough to qualify for Medicare.

“Why are we Democrats losing the working class? Why do they like our policies but vote for the party that comforts the comfortable? What’s wrong with our messaging? What’s wrong with our candidates?”

Odd as it may seem, a partial answer can be found in the works of a writer who never set foot in the United States and who has been dead for more than 70 years. When George Orwell traveled to the Depression-ravaged north of England in 1936, his intention was to chronicle the horrific conditions in the mines, the towns and the homes of the people who lived and worked there. (His account of the near starvation, the hellish conditions in the mines, the sights, sounds and smells of life are still riveting all these decades later).

It is in the second half of his book, “The Road to Wigan Pier,” where Orwell deals with a broader question: If socialism is the way toward providing a fairer, more decent life for those with the least, why has it not succeeded politically? His answer — one that unsettled his Left Book Club’s publisher — was that there was a deep cultural chasm between the advocates of socialism and those they were seeking to persuade.

………

Orwell, himself a socialist, argues first that “Socialism in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the [relatively well-off] middle class.” In its language, it is formal, stilted, wholly distant from the language of ordinary citizens, spoken by people who are several rungs above their audience, and with no intention of giving up that status.

It sounds like Orwell is describing, "Kente cloth, or, "Latinix," doesn't it?

………

In the most provocative segment of the entire book, Orwell also cites “the horrible, the really disquieting prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw toward them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” And he notes the prospectus for a summer Socialist school in which attendees are asked if they prefer a vegetarian diet.

Yea, the problem is all those progressives, and not the people who are willing to kneecap their own party  in order to keep their personal gravy train running.

Notwithstanding his describing himself as a socialist, Bernie Sanders is basically a New Dealer, and significantly to the right of, for example, former Vice President Henry Wallace.

………

One reason that’s the case is Democrats have not found a way to draw clear, convincing lines separating the most militant voices in their party from the beliefs of a large majority of their base. Consider Orwell’s argument that the language of the left is “wholly distant from the language of ordinary citizens.” Many of today’s Democrats seem intimidated by the preferred phrases of the week, even if few of them embrace or recognize such language. (A recent survey revealed that only 2 percent of Hispanics prefer the term “Latinx” to describe themselves.)

………

It is — or should be — equally obvious that the policy prescriptions of the Republican Party present a wide-open running field for Democrats to argue on the friendliest of political grounds. The economic core of Democrats’ arguments — a higher minimum wage, lower prescription drug costs, a better chance for college education, with programs paid for by higher taxes on the affluent and mega-rich — enjoy broad public support.

Here Jeff Greenfield misses the point.

While the public and the Democratic Party base may favor those policies, the  Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) does not.

For the party functionaries, who spend their lives going from meagerly paid party positions to well paid political consulting positions, resolving these issues is bad for business.

They don't want someone who can deliver on promises, or even someone who can win the general election, they want someone who spends money like water on ……… wait for it ……… political consultants.

They don't want to win, because for the Democrats and the American public to truly win and to truly make change, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) would necessarily lose power and money.

As I have noted many times, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution."  It's called the Iron Law of Institutions.

It's the hypocrisy, stupid.

Once Again, the Iron Law of Institutions

For those of you who do not recall this dictum, it states that, The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution."

In this case, I am referring to the super PACs that the Connor Lamb campaign is coordinating with in has battle to be the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Pennsylvania against Lt. Governor John Fetterman.

Lamb is a DINO and a disloyal Democrat, (he's a part of the "Problem Solvers" caucus) so it is no surprise that they are going after Fetterman with accusations that are both false and damaging to the party.

It's kind of what the so-called moderates do:

A super PAC backing Pennsylvania Senate candidate Conor Lamb is warning prospective donors that he is trailing frontrunner John Fetterman by 30 percentage points in the Democratic primary — and that the public’s perception of his opponent’s ideology must change for Lamb to have a shot.

“[P]rimary voters don’t yet see Fetterman as the liberal he is,” reads a memo circulated by the pro-Lamb group Penn Progress, which was obtained by POLITICO. “For Conor Lamb to have a path in the primary, this dynamic needs to change.”

Unlike the bloodbath taking place in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary, the contest on the Democratic side has been a relatively tame affair. Fetterman and Lamb haven’t laid a finger on each other on TV, and no outside Democratic groups have aired attack ads on television either.

The nine-page slide deck disseminated by Penn Progress after a recent fundraising call with donors suggests that could soon change.

The document highlights the testing of aggressive negative messaging against Fetterman, who is Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, including that he is a “dangerous radical who proudly calls himself a socialist,” “supports far-left policies like a $34 trillion-dollar government takeover of healthcare,” and has “spoken at Defund the Police rallies and wants to release convicted felons back onto our streets.”

This is all lies (Fetterman does support M4A, but tepidly), but when all you have as an asset is big money donors, you spend it like water, enriching the consultants, and run against your own party, because you are pond scum:

Abby Nassif-Murphy, Lamb’s campaign manager, shot back: “This material did not come from our campaign. But the fact that John Fetterman thinks only Fox News Republicans oppose socialism, defunding the police, and banning all private health insurance shows how out of touch he is with reality and why the Republicans are dying to run against him in the fall.”

A recent email promoting the pro-Lamb group to potential donors said the congressman would join an upcoming call, after which a leader of the super PAC would speak. Though many Democrats bristle at the practice, it is legal for candidates to talk to super PAC donors and even attend their fundraisers, as long as they don’t personally ask for contributions in excess of their own campaign finance limits.

And here is the kicker:

………

The presentation also showcased a separate survey done in mid-February on a potential general election match-up. It found Fetterman initially leading celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz by 9 percentage points, while Lamb was ahead by 3.

Yeah, the "electable" moderate is doing 6 points worse.

Standing on a hillside, screaming, "Better things aren't possible," is not a winning electoral strategy.

H/t Atrios.

Seems Awfully Familiar

It appears that some members of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are pushing for pushing to move money and authority from the Democratic Party to the state parties, on the theory that the consultant dominated national party cannot get ot of its own way.

If this sounds familiar, this is probably because it's very close to Howard Dean's tenure as head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) when he instituted the, "50 State Strategy."

The official justification used by Howard Dean was that the party should contest every election, as opposed to writing off whole districts or states, a subtext was that by taking resources from an incompetent and corrupt national office, and giving it to people who actually live where the elections are happening, and who aren't dependent on wasteful spending to fund their kids private school tuition, you get better results. (Of course, Obama's and his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dismantled this post haste following the 2008 elections)

When one considers the mendacity and incompetence of the Democratic Party inside the DC beltway, this looks to be an attractive option:

Dozens of voting members of the Democratic National Committee met Friday to organize a new voting bloc to push for changes to the internal governance of the national party and send more money to state party groups, according to multiple attendees.

The gathering at the Churchill Hotel in D.C., across the street from the party’s winter meeting, came after months of growing complaints among some rank-and-file voting members. They argue that the top-down structure of the DNC, which is directed by advisers to President Biden, risks undermining changes aimed at empowering the grass roots that went into effect after the 2016 presidential election.

Calling itself “DNC Members for Party Modernization,” the group is pushing for a greater share of the national party budget to be channeled directly to the states, more distributed regional representation in the party leadership teams, greater internal oversight of the party budget and other changes to the party’s governing rules, such as new restrictions on proxy voting.

“This is us saying, ‘We are the DNC and we want the DNC to be more responsive to the states,’” said Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb, one of the organizers. “We have now been through several cycles kicking ourselves and saying we should have organized. So we are organizing ourselves.”

The effort tracks fissures among Democrats that have been endemic for decades, dating most notably to former Vermont governor Howard Dean’s leadership of the party, when he focused after the 2004 election on investing in all state parties. The current DNC leadership has aimed much of its funding at a select number of swing states that are likely to decide Senate control in 2022 and the presidential election in 2024. Several state parties in other parts of the country believe more-local efforts have been left behind.

As I have noted before, (see here, here, here, here, and here) the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) has a problem with corruption. 

I do not think that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) can be mended in the near term, so defunding it is the best course of action.

I would also note that the problems within the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) are a manifest example of the Iron Law of Institutions, that, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution," though one could quote Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles as well, "We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen!"

The Difference between the Opposition and the Enemy

Redistricting fights tend to be the nastiest fights out there.

As such, it reveals some serious truths about people, so the decision by Illinois Democrats screw Marie Newman, the woman who finally took out faux Democrat, and nepotism poster child, Dan Lipinski in a primary.

Once again, I have to make the obvious point:  faux progressives, like New Labour and Clinton Democrats, see Republicans as the oppositions, but progressives as the enemy, because should the latter take power, they and theirs, would lose their power.

It's the Iron Law of Institutions, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution."

Illinois' state legislature passed a new congressional map early Friday morning that likely secures Democrats' control of 14 of the state’s 17 congressional districts — but it also condemned liberal freshman Rep. Marie Newman to an uncomfortable fate at the 11th hour.

Newman, who rose to fame in 2020 after ousting a veteran conservative Democrat, Dan Lipinski, fell victim to last-minute changes by Springfield legislators plotting to both boost Democratic Rep. Sean Casten and create a new district where the Latino community could elect their candidate of choice. Now, Casten and Newman are set to clash in a primary next June.

A draft map released last weekend looped both Casten and Newman together in one district — but after a concerted campaign from Casten allies, the legislature reversed course. A new map unveiled just hours before it was approved artfully carved Newman’s hometown of La Grange out of the district with Casten’s home and into the heavily Latino seat of Democratic Rep. Chuy García — where she would face long odds in a potential primary.

………

Yet by late Friday morning Newman announced that she would challenge Casten in the new 6th District regardless: "The lion's share of this new district is made up of the communities and residents I represent today and I look forward to continuing to serve them in Congress."

There is no requirement for a Congressman to live in their district, the Constitution says so, so she can do this, but it makes it more difficult.

Casten is a corporate Democrat, a member of the New Democrat Coalition, so I would love to see him lose to her in the primary.

The district is going blue anyway.

The lesson to be learned her is that progressive Democrats cannot support institutions which are dominated by the corporate wing of the party.  Those institutions will pull out all the stops to sabotage progressives.

One need only look at Labour, where the party bureaucracy was actively sabotaging Jeremy Corbyn, and once Keir Starmer took control, he has focused almost exclusively on purging ……… Well ……… Labour from the Labour party, and so has given the Conservatives a free pass.

The Corrupt One Wins the Primary

The standard narrative is that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) pulled out all of the stops for Shontel Brown over former Bernie Sanders campaign staffer Nina Turner because they want a "moderate".

I think that the motivation of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is rather that they wanted someone with a strong allegiance to the monied interests who buy politicians, because if they don't have enough corrupt Democrats, then the effectiveness of campaign donations in influencing public policy decreases. (Also, they just love hippie punching)

This ability to raise money in a barely veiled quid pro quo is really the only real power of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Well, after something around 2 million dollars in PAC money, Shontel Brown has won the primary, despite increasing evidence of her corruption:

After months of appearing at a significant disadvantage, Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown was declared by the Associated Press as the winner in of Tuesday’s Democratic primary for the 11th Congressional District, all but ensuring her place in Congress.

Multiple outlets called the race for Brown around 9:35 p.m., though official results have not been certified by the secretary of state’s office. Former state Sen. Nina Turner conceded the race to Brown around 10:10 p.m.

Brown led Turner 50% to 44% as of midnight. Turner led Brown in the smaller portion of the district in Summit County, 49% to 48% – a difference of only 54 votes out of 6,580 cast – after all the votes from that county had been tallied. But Brown led Turner significantly in Cuyahoga County 51% to 44% – around 4,400 votes – with around 96% of the vote reporting as of midnight.

Brown will face Republican Laverne Gore in the Nov. 2 general election, though she is almost certain to succeed in that contest as the district is heavily gerrymandered to favor Democrats.

………

Nevertheless, the feeling on the ground at the beginning of July was close. Nearly $2 million of outside money – largely from the Israel lobby – was used to begin attacking Turner in television ads for past criticisms of the Democratic Party and President Joe Biden.

………

Brown will now have to decide if she wants to stay on in her role as chairwoman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

………

The divisive special election – and Brown’s willingness to accept Republican money – may lead to a change in leadership at the county party before the 2022 midterms.

………

In her concession speech, Turner said she would continue her activist work laying blame at the big money spent against her for her defeat.

“I am going to work hard to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen to another progressive candidate again,” she said. “We didn’t lose this race, evil money manipulated and maligned this election.”

I agree with Nina Turner.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) believes that Republicans, even the insurrectionists, are the opposition and that real progressives are the enemy.

It's the Iron Law of Institutions, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution."

Why the Democratic Party Fails

Mike the Mad Biologist says something that I have been saying for years that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is more interested in corruption and self dealing than they are in winning or governing:

To follow up on yesterday’s post about Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s decision to tank Senate bill S1, making it highly unlikely Democrats will hold either the House or the Senate in 2022, there is one way to still win elections. That is to massively increase voter turnout through organizing.

The problem is that the consultants picked by the Democratic Party leadership–and which are forced on Democratic candidates–have no incentive to do this. They don’t want to give ‘their money’ to a bunch of local and state organizers, who are typically unaffiliated with specific candidates or even the Democratic Party. That’s not the business model–the business model is running TV ads (sometimes online ads too) and getting a cut of the expenditure. Meanwhile the people on the ground who bang on doors are shortchanged.

With a Chief Justice on the Supreme Court who has dedicated his entire career to making sure that n*****s don't vote, the old ways are not going to cut it.

Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy, which devolved power and resources to state and local party groups, worked, but he was unceremoniously dumped by that avatar of establishment thinking Barack Obama, and everything went back to the dysfunctional normal.

The Democratic Party needs to:

• Have a 24/7/365 get out the vote and registration effort.
• Recognize that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is DC is dysfunctional and incompetent and:
• Move critical party infrastructure from private firms like NGP VAN to internal personnel.
• Move as much of the power and money in the party to state and local party organizations.
• Stop trying to choose candidates in state and local races. 
• Rein in expensive and incompetent consultants.

It would also be nice if they could stop being afraid of their own shadows, but that's probably too much to ask.  

Of Course they Are Blaming Corbyn

There were by-elections in the UK yesterday, and labour completely screwed the pooch, loosing a seat that they have held since its founding 62 years ago.

Jeremy Corbyn is being blamed, because ……… Blairite Labour is sees Boris Johnson and the Tories as the opposition, and people who actually support progressive policies as the enemy.

It is not 1995.  It's not even 2008.

The great recession changed things, and you are going to get more Boris Johnsons and more Donald Trumps until they stop sucking up to predatory capital as a campaign strategy:

Keir Starmer is facing immediate pressure from the left of Labour to change course after losing the Hartlepool byelection and a string of council seats to the Conservatives.

It came as Boris Johnson, visiting Hartlepool after the Conservatives took the seat for the first time in its 47-year history, said the result – which turned a Labour majority of 3,600 into a Tory win by nearly 7,000 votes, a 16-point swing – was “a mandate” for the government to press on.

………

While Labour had accepted the early results were likely to be among the worst of the series of votes across England, Scotland and Wales, the immediate message from Starmer and his allies was to push for a more rapid move away from the Jeremy Corbyn era.

Corbyn out-performed expectations in 3 of 4 elections with the party infrastructure actively sabotaging him.

You followed that up with party purges against him and his supporters.

If you think that the problem is that you are not moving fast enough away from Corbyn, you are delusional.

………

Diane Abbott, who was shadow home secretary under Corbyn, tweeted: “Keir Starmer must think again about his strategy.” She added: “Crushing defeat for Labour in Hartlepool. Not possible to blame Jeremy Corbyn for this result. Labour won the seat twice under his leadership.”

Richard Burgon, the Leeds East MP who was shadow justice secretary under Corbyn, said Starmer’s team “needs to urgently change direction”. He tweeted: “It should start by championing the popular policies in our recent manifestos – backed by a large majority of voters.”

A spokesman for Momentum, the Corbyn-allied Labour group, said: “The leadership are reacting to this disaster by promising ‘more change’ – but over the last year we’ve gone backwards. It’s time to change direction, not double down on a failed strategy.”

They are going to double down on a failed strategy, because playing to win means that they lose power within the party. 

One of Tony Blair's "innovations" for Labour was the imposition of a top-down process in selecting MPs in many seats, and if the left takes power, and has the guts to deal with members more interested in power IN the party than the power OF the party, their positions will be far less secure.

New Nevada Democratic Party Leadership Raises Money Looted by Old Guard

You may recall that after reformers took over the Nevada Democratic Party, the entire staff quit, transferred much of their cash to the DSCC, took most of the remainder as severance, and quit. (The consultants quit too)

I called it an, "Own Goal," because it ended up removing ears and eyes and potential saboteurs affiliated with the old guard from the organization.  (This is a lesson that can be learned from Jeremy Corbyn and the active monkey-wrenching committed by professional staff in Labour)

Now it appears that, the Nevada Democratic Party has raised a crap-load more money than was looted by the old guard:

Just over a month after the staff of Nevada’s Democratic Party quit rather than work alongside an incoming slate of candidates backed by the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, taking $450,000 and severance with them, the party’s new leadership has raised that money back with some to spare.

The Nevada Democrats have raised $530,000 from more than 16,500 contributions since the March 6 elections, when a progressive slate of five candidates — one incumbent and four newcomers — took over the party, beating the preferred picks of the local machine. The figure includes $100,000 raised on their own within a few weeks of the election and a boost in contributions with help from national progressive allies like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., who sent fundraising emails over the last several weeks on the party’s behalf.

………

When Judith Whitmer, founder and chair emeritus of Left Caucus, won the March 6 election for state party chair, her predecessors did not only almost empty the state party’s accounts, but they also funneled the money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and notified Whitmer that all their consultants had terminated their contracts. The DSCC will use the money to support the 2022 reelection campaign of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev. In the runup to March 6, Cortez Masto asked Whitmer to drop out of the race and approached her opponent, Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom, a Sanders ally who is more established in the state party, to run.

Don't rehire the consultants.  Instead, focus your efforts about increasing registration and turnout for likely Democratic voters.

The consultants are parasites, the old guard is useless.

When You Follow a Defeat with an Own Goal

Following years or organizing, progressive Democrats in Nevada took 4 of 5 of the leadership positions in the state Democratic Party, out organizing the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) there.

The Nevada Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) then shot itself in the foot by convincing the entire staff of the party to quit. 

You see, you want your people there, picking up the mail, conducting polls, and managing the budget, because they are the ones best placed to sabotage the new leadership, as evidenced by the years long campaign of sabotage against Jeremy Corbyn by the professional staff of the Labour Party in the UK.

Not only will the new leaders be able to hire people that they trust, but should they refuse to resign when there is a change of power, they will be difficult, or at least embarrassing, to fire: 

Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.

She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.

(Emphasis mine) 

As an aside, make sure that the consultants stay resigned.  They are useless.

On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. [I have gotten conflicting reports on this, it appears that the party Treasurer might be the old guard candidate] Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair. The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.

Again, asking for unity, and when your side does not win, sabotage the winners.

Democrats never do this for Republicans, but false Democrats always do this to real Democrats. 

………

Despite the pushback, Whitmer ultimately won the election, in which the state party’s governing members voted. In the certified election results, she received 244 to Segerblom’s 214; Jacob Allen won first vice chair by 101 votes; Dr. Zaffar Iqbal, on Whitmer’s progressive slate, was reelected second vice chair by 127 votes; Ahmad Adé won secretary by 39 votes; and Howard Beckerman won treasurer by three votes. [Again, note, the Las Vegas Review-Journal story has Beckerman losing.]

After the results, Mounce sent the email making clear that everyone on the small staff had resigned, including the party operations director, communications director, research director, and finance director.

An interesting coda to this is that, "The Democratic National Committee hired Mounce as their new political director last month."

The final word on all of this is a reworking of Lyndon Johnson an old Lyndon Johnson quote:  "It is better to have them outside the tent pissing in than it is to have them inside the tent pissing in."

Reid's machine will try to take power back, and they will do so until the sun collapses into a cinder, but with all of their inside people gone, it will become much harder for them to do so.

Live/Drunk Blogging the Election

11:40pm:
Massachusetts approves right to repair legislation.

People do not want to be screwed by their car dealers, at least now without lube.

Good night all.

11:38pm:
I am going to leave you with a thought from P.C. Hodgell:

"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be."

11:32pm:
I'm drunk, and tired, and I'm shutting down.

My final thought: America is broken, and Biden was running on a "Return to Normalcy," and this is unsustainable.

11:24pm:
If we had nominated Bernie, we'd have already crossed the 270 threshold, but the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), needed to keep their gravy train rolling.

11:20pm:
Florida approves a $15/hr minimum wage, New Jersey approves recreatinal marijuana.

The initiatives that I am most interested in are right to repair in Massachusetts, and Uber's attempt to re-institute gig-economy slavery in California.

11:17pm:
I think that I might be too drunk to blog, which is WAY less interesting than the Dead Kennedys album "Too Drunk to F%$#."

11:13pm:
I need to note that I am NOT going to stay up beyond midnight, so we are probably not gboing to get a final result for this post.

You might want to check out the cat that went to the beach and hated the wind.

11:11pm:
McConnell didn't just beat McGrath, he destroyed her, and the consultants got a cut of all that money set on fire.

11:03pm:
California, Oregon, and Washington went for Biden, but we knew that this would happen.

Switching to The Daily Show.

10:57pm:
Lindsay Graham (SC) looks to win reelection, but in Georgia, it looks like the Senate race is heading to a runoff.

10:41pm:
Arizona is definitely in play.  Interesting.

10:37pm:
McConnell won reelection against the hapless, and anti-ideological campaign of Amy McGrath, favored by the DNC, the DSCC, and the DNC, has failed because, as I have said, , "You can't beat something with nothing, even if the something is awful."

She lost to a f%$#ing box turtle.

10:35pm:
Remembering 2000, please God, let it not come down to Florida.

BTW, it looks like the highest turnout in decades.

10:34pm:
Most of the states out of the Pacific time zone have closed polled.

10:22pm:
Breaking for dinner.  Having some Romenesko Broccoli and cheese soup.

10:21pm:
Doug Jones loses in Alabama.  Not a surprise.  He's not running against a pedophile this year.

10:18pm:
It looks like Florida is going to go for Trump.

Way to go Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

10:12pm:
I have a prediction:  That I will be seriously shicker (drunk) within the next 15 minutes.

10:09pm:
Arizona, which is always just one election away from turning Democratic Party, appears to remain one election away.

The consultants don't care.  They get their vig win or lose.

10:04pm:
The BBC is strongly implying that Trump will pull this out.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) appears to have screwed the pooch once again.

The Iron Law of Institutions, which states that power WITHIN an organization is pursued at the expense of the power OF that organization, may once again end up f%$#ing us all.

10:02pm:
Crap.  It appears that they will be calling Florida for Trump soon.

I wonder how they will blame the progressives for this.

9:59pm:
I took a break to cuddle with Meatball, because I needed some Kitteh:

9:53pm:
For my Jewish friends, if you want to make Aliyah to Israel, you can go to this link.

If you are not Jewish, consider getting a circumcision.

9:47pm:
Democratic party stalwarts are sounding remarkably subdued, because this is NOT the blowout that they expected.

I've said this a number of times, "You can't beat something with nothing, even if the something is awful."

9:45pm:
Why can't Comedy Central do coverage of the elections?  It would be so much more pleasant.

Switching to the Beeb.  (BBC)

9:43pm:
Turning off Taibbi and Halper, mostly they are looking for drinking points for their game.

9:36pm:
Checking the NY Times map, and it has:

• Biden winning Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, DC, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.
• Trump winnign, North & South Dakota, Georgia, Wyoming, Nebraska, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louuisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina.

Ohio is in play in a number of reports.

I need to drink more.

9:31pm:
Crap, the awful Susan Collins looking good right now.  She is the epitome of everything that is wrong with politics.

9:27pm:
Live streaming Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper as well.

They seem bummed, and Virginia seems to be in play.

We are f%$#ed if that is true.

9:21pm:
Switching to MSNBC.

Rachel Maddow, as always is chipper, which I find grating as hell.  I have since she, at the behest of her corporate masters at MSNBC, tried to queer the California primary in 2016.

9:18pm:
Well, here we go.  I've poured myself a stiff rum and (flat) Coke, and I am ready to turn to the news.