Pages

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Anti-Single Payer lobbyist Howard Dean is Flocking Together with an election loser.

Paid to lobby. Read the story. Same lobbying bunch that pays/paid Newt Gingrich. That's a measure.

Then, Flocking Together (isn't that Hillary's name for her new thing?). For birds of a feather in chasing money.

Still Waiting: As a person of integrity beyond question, Elizabeth Warren quoted last November:

“What we go[t] to do now as Democrats is hold this party accountable,” Warren said. “When Tom Perez was first elected chair of the DNC, the very first conversation I had with him was to say, ‘You have got to put together a Democratic Party in which everybody can have confidence that the party is working for Democrats rather than Democrats working for the party.'”

She continued, “He’s being tested now. This is a test for Tom Perez and he’s going to succeed by bringing Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders’ representatives into this process and they’re going to say its fair, it works, we believe it, or he’s going to fail.”

The item, which could have been news a day or two ago - a report of stasis, with the paragraph following the Warren quoting:

So far, Perez and the rest of the Democratic establishment have failed to unify the party. In Trump’s first year in office, the DNC has continued to malign Bernie Sanders supporters and progressives. Rather than embracing progressives as an asset required to recoup the party’s losses, the Democratic Party has tried to push them out. Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and several other Democrats have smeared progressives as the “Tea Party of the left,” and others like Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) have reduced their policy stances to “purity tests.” Obama officials hand-picked Tom Perez to stop progressive Keith Ellison from becoming DNC chair in February 2017, and delegates were reportedly intimidated and threatened into supporting Perez. Once Perez became chair, he loaded DNC staff positions and appointments with former Clinton staffers and lobbyists, while leaving out progressives. Several state Democratic parties, most notably Florida and California, held party chair races this year that were won by establishment-backed candidates under dubious circumstances that further disenfranchised progressives.

[multiple links omitted from original] The Perez report card:

F-

Yet, it is never too late to be smarter. Spoils are Trump's to win or lose in 2020. Perez will see 2018 midterm results, and become complacent. And worse than four more years of Trump would be any years of President Pence. The ball is in the Perez and Flocking Together court. A fine bet, they slam it into the net, Clinton and Dean playing ill coordinated mixed doubles and trying to be too cute.

Trump, as last time, will take what's on a silver platter. Unless a learning curve and reform ambition, in some way, takes hold. One bet is Haim Saban is not at all cheerless over the Trump presidency, Jerusalem salute and Pence visit, all that, while Bibi bribe lover faces indictment; but so what, there's more warhawking where Bibi came from. Saban is a nuisance and should be told where to stow his money.