Obama and Perez are kindred lost souls, or make it kindred frauds. Were you, now knowing recent history, to expect either CHANGE or HOPE from either, you'd be idiot enough to have some other con sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.
This is a topic hard to let go. Crabgrass already posted, here, linking to Jacobin's post about the sleaze bucket. Because the Perez segue says so much about the true nature of the pack of Democratic Party nationwide bosses, who seem to hate the people as much as Trump does, it foreshadows the furture strangle any chance the Party will become people friendly rather than Moloch friendly, Mammon friendly, while whoring with lies, to US.
That said, moving next to online commentary and reporting (beyond Jacobin's) of the SOB finally showing his true colors by taking the job at a labor-undermining law firm.
But one more thing to add, before that:
TOM PEREZ MIRRORS ALL THAT IS WcRONG WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY - PEREZ, WHOSE LAST NAME SHOULD BE CHANGED TO CLINTON, ARGUABLY IS WORTH A PINCH OF SHIT, BUT NO MORE THAN THAT.
Now online commentary, of note:
SLUDGE first:
After a four year tenure as chair of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez has taken a job as partner at Washington D.C. law and lobbying firm Venable LLP.
“When assisting clients with legal, legislative, and regulatory matters across a broad range of subject matter areas, Tom Perez brings to bear decades of experience leading government organizations at the federal, state, and local levels,” Venable’s website says.
Venable advertises services defending employers against labor unions, including collective bargaining negotiations, refuting unfair labor practices allegations, and offering advice during union organizing campaigns and petition drives.
“We regularly counsel and train clients on union avoidance,” Venable’s website reads.
Perez took charge of a beleaguered DNC in 2017, after an election cycle where the group was accused by some of its most influential figures of rigging the nominating process against grassroots candidate Bernie Sanders and in favor of establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. But rather than reckoning with how the organization funneled $82 million to the Clinton campaign and patching up relations with the grassroots elements of the party, Perez elevated establishment figures to positions where they could vote down reforms like instituting a conflict of interest policy and banning corporate lobbyists from being superdelegates.
As Sludge has covered extensively, Perez purged key DNC committees of members who had supported Sanders or his chairmanship opponent Keith Ellison, and replaced them with corporate lobbyists and Clinton allies. For example, Perez appointed multiple corporate figures to the DNC Executive Committee in 2017, including state oil and gas lobbyist Tonio Burgos, lobbying firm principal Minyon Moore, and finance industry and casino gaming consultant Susan Swecker.
- and more -
“His investment in state parties was almost non-existent, his Rural Desk consisted of a single person, and he even managed to screw up the 2020 Iowa caucuses,” said political consultant Matt L. Barron. “All in all, Perez has to be one of the worst DNC chairs ever.”
A context for that last sentence is that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was his predecessor; making it necessary to have to write "one of." More:
Department of Defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin employs Venable to lobby on the defense appropriations bill provisions related to its contracts and tax issues involving foreign-derived income. Eagle LNG, a Texas natural gas company with operations throughout the Caribbean, pays Venable to lobby Congress on energy infrastructure issues, marine fuel, and fuel bunkering. Other Venable lobbying clients include American Airlines, hedge fund Citadel LLC, utility trade association Edison Electric Institute, and McAfee LLC.
Perez is not yet a registered lobbyist, but his Venable bio page lists services including “legislative and government affairs,” which can include lobbying visits with officials as well as work like monitoring regulatory proceedings and preparing research and other materials to influence the government.
In August 2020, toward the end of Perez’s stint as DNC chair, the DNC Rules Committee voted down a resolution from a Sanders delegate to amend the DNC charter to ban it from accepting corporate PAC donations and prohibit lobbyists for for-profit corporations from serving as members. Many of the Rules Committee members who led the opposition to the resolution were Perez appointees with background in corporate lobbying, Sludge found.
Then the coup de gras for the credibility of the Democratic Party, national level, by SLUDGE:
Perez has been replaced as DNC chair by Jaime Harrison, a former lobbyist and floor director and counsel for House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.). Harrison worked for Podesta Group as a lobbyist from 2008 through 2016, representing 68 clients including Boeing, Bank of America, BP America, Wells Fargo, and Wal-Mart.
Clyburn and the Podesta brother ties suggest the above noted "one of" comment is super relevant, given successor, as well as predecessor. Shit running DNC makes it hard to vote Dem, with only Trump, McConnell, Paul Ryan and such suggesting it could be worse.
DNC's kind of "leadership" transitioning (in light of the alternative) should make an "independent" out of every cogent soul in the nation.
There's another relevant online analysis from 2020, i.e., from before this latest backstabbing of labor by an Obama administration insider; context being right after the Iowa caucus SNAFU on the Dem side of things, working against Bernie's popularity. American Prospect having then posted:
Tom Perez Should Resign, Preferably Today -- He represents an establishment that has put its own position in the party above the party’s success. It’s time to go.
by David Dayen - February 7, 2020
Tom Perez should never have been DNC chair. He was used as part of a proxy war between Barack Obama’s faction of the establishment and the rest of the party, which was fully ready to move on after the 2016 mess. Both Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer had embraced Keith Ellison, one of Bernie Sanders’s top surrogates in 2016, for the position, a show of unity that might have helped rebuild broken bonds within the party. Just as Howard Dean’s elevation to DNC chair in 2005 brought insurgents within a broader circle of power, Ellison’s victory would have at least attempted a rough union between the Sanders and Clinton forces, and given the party’s left wing more of a shot at creating a strong and legitimate message to counter Donald Trump.
Obama couldn’t handle it. He pressured Perez, who was musing about running for governor in Maryland, into the race, and bore down on the establishment to break with the Ellison unity shtick and accept his preferred candidate. This eventually succeeded, with the help of a party coup in Puerto Rico that delivered Perez all of that delegation’s votes.
Obama, now a movie studio boss and occasional public speaker, had no personal reason to force Perez on the party. The most logical reading of his rationale would be that he did it for the blob, the network of consultants, strategists, pollsters, lobbyists, policy mandarins, and media figures for whom politics is their business. They didn’t want the spigot to close on the hundreds of millions of dollars that flow through campaigns, and they needed to eliminate the threat of a gatekeeper like Ellison, who might have different ideas. So Perez was installed.
The disastrous past week of Democratic politics is the result, deeply damaging the perceived competence of a party that is attempting to ask the American people to put them back in power to engage in activist government. The Iowa results weren’t just one snafu but part of a pattern of self-dealing and stupidity within a party elite that’s more concerned with staying in power than taking power. And so, for the second straight cycle, like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a DNC chair needs to step down before the end of their term. Tom Perez must go.
He didn't. Until now. Replaced by dreck. The bulk of the remainder of that 2020 American Prospect item dealt with how Perez led a biased and abominable fuck-up in the 2020 Iowa caucusing, one which, however, disadvantaged Bernie.
Of all things?
.......................................................
Finally, for readers who ignored urging in earlier Crabgrass posting to access the current Jacobin item, excerpting next, from it's beginning:
Tom Perez announced on Thursday that he’s joining the law firm Venable LLP, whose website boasts that its lawyers “regularly counsel and train clients on union avoidance.”
Perez, who was the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair until January, joins a growing number of Obama officials who cashed in their government experience with jobs at union-busting companies. That list includes press secretaries Jay Carney, who became the top flack at Amazon, and Robert Gibbs, who spent several years as a top flack for McDonald’s. Obama senior advisor David Plouffe served as policy chief at Uber, while former senior adviser Valerie Jarrett has a board seat at Lyft.
Rather than avoid issues he oversaw as labor secretary, Perez said in a press release he will be working specifically on those issues.
“Venable’s attorneys are at the forefront of helping clients navigate dynamic regulatory, policy, and labor and employment issues,” Perez said in Venable’s press release announcing his hiring. “I look forward to joining them in this important work.”
Michael Volpe, a cochair of Venable’s labor and employment practice group, said that Perez’s “unique background and insights on workplace matters will be invaluable to our clients.” Volpe’s firm biography notes that he has “broad experience representing corporate interests in union organizing efforts and campaigns.”
With that record of former Obama flunkies cashing in anti-labor, what else needs to be said? How from ordinary beginnings you get a Martha's Vineyard waterfront mansion estate is not via a people friendly legacy, but something you can HOPE for if you CHANGE things in ways favored by Mammon. Just move to the dark side of The Force. Then, Mammon rewards.
_________UPDATE________
Two items more, NYT hinting at the politics from before Perez formally put his name into the contest to succeed DWS as DNC head; and this current image from DWT.
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Interestingly, the NYT item mentions, "Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party" as a voice in things back then; while the DWT item speaks for itself, (the image headlining this DWT post).
In Minnesota, DFL people in office and in support are clearly better than the Minnesota Republicans, who now fawn over Trump.
Nationally, both parties suck. Biden in place getting nothing done but posturing well, with Manchin as an excuse for nothing getting done; Harris in waiting - depressing at best. Republicans, a joke, but with a rabid base and effective GOTV, despite their being who they are. Lindsey Graham arguably being a prototypical Trump stooge.
Lindsey Graham additionally whoomped Harrison in the last Senate election to remain in Congress, tons of money failing to buy that seat for Harrison. Harrison then was the Clyburn-Biden choice to head DNC, much as Ms. Harris was the Clyburn-Biden choice for VP.
Progress suffers, unless and until . . . CHANGE
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