It's a Mistake

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez (below), having seen his undistinguished predecessor Debbie Wasserman Schultz rig the 2016 Democratic presidential abates in favor of a flawed candidate who was destined to lose, came up with a different formula for the 2020 Democratic presidential debates to give everyone running for the nomination an equal chance to particiapte in them.  He was not going to make the same mistake that Debbie made by getting behind a candidate in advance or setting up a debate format that would benefit front-runners.  And he didn't.  But he made a new mistake.  

Perez set up a system in which candidates had to get X percentage points in polls and Y individual donors to take part in debates, with the figures starting at low numbers for qualifying for the first debate in June 2019 and gradually increasing with each passing month.  The idea was to winnow the field over time, but it didn't winnow it by much - of the 24 candidates who started out, eleven have withdrawn, but there are still fifteen contenders, including two - Deval Patrick and Michael Bloomberg - who have entered late.  (For the record, that means there have been 26 Democratic presidential candidates, one for every man to occupy the Presidency from 1789 to 1913.)  And the eleven candidates who have withdrawn from the campaign are the lesser-known contestants that Perez's system was supposedly intended to help.  The front-runners - Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders - have benefited in the polls and with individual donors thanks in no small part to their name recognition.  As a new name, only Pete Buttigieg has benefited from Perez's rules.

Also, the rules have had the unintended consequence of knocking black and Hispanic contenders out of the debates, making the field of candidates who qualify for them more overwhelmingly white than Iowa and New Hampshire themselves.  But it's also been unfair to white guys - namely, white guys like Michael Bennet, whose soft-spoken, pragmatic approach would provide a stark and refreshing contrast to Trump, and Steve Bullock, who knows how to win as a Democrat in a Republican state.   Bennet is still in the "race" while Bullock has dropped out, and Bennet can't get into the debates any more than Cory Booker can. 

At least the December debate, with its smaller field, allowed for some substantive discussion on the issues - Warren's underhanded attack on Buttigieg notwithstanding - and Biden proved himself to be a skilled debater in a milieu where he doesn't have to respond in a thirty-second sound bite and can take his time to express himself.  But the Democrats are getting themselves bogged down in process and fairness issues when they should be talking even more about issues like climate change and health care - not just in the presidential debates but in the media and on the campaign trail.  This nonsense all stems from Perez's flawed set of rules.  Unless the Democrats can put all of that behind them and concentrate on the need to get Trump voted out of office, they will lose everything in 2020 and may not be around for 2022 or 2024.

Please don't make me revive my #DemsWhigOut hashtag again! 

The Decline of the Democratic National Committee Explained

If the Democrats manage to win back the House of Representatives and take over eight governorships next week, it will be no thanks to the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Let me explain how the DNC declined and fell like the Roman Colosseum.

Under DWS, when the political careers of many Democrats went RIP,  the DNC went DOA.

In 2016, when the DNC got in trouble for tipping the scales for Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination, and DWS was Xed out, the party had to turn it up a couple of DBs.

 And once America got the DTs . . .

. . . the Democrats TP'ed themselves in response.

And so many rank-and-file Democrats are disillusioned, they want to go running to Mom.

Maybe they should consider running to M'OM.

Because, through his Win Back Your State PAC (don't you hate those silly initials?), Martin O'Malley has learned what voters want and what voters are concerned about.  Unlike the Democratic National Committee.  If the Democrats do well in this election, thank Martin O'Malley, and pay attention to what he says if and when he runs for President again.  

Listen to your M'OM.

Win Back Your State.  Because the DNC won't.  

You Don't Fit the Suit

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez (below) said he was going to do something about Trump when he took over his party's chairmanship, and today he filed a suit against the Trump campaign, the Russian government, Wikileaks, and Paul Manafort for hacking the DNC's e-mail server and releasing those unflattering e-mails about Hillary Clinton that Perez says tipped the scales for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Wait a minute - I thought he said he was going to do something about Trump.

So let me see if I have this straight.  The Democrats are suing numerous entities on charges of a conspiracy that Robert Mueller has not yet proven existed, with little thought toward coming up with a message that will resonate with voters in this year's midterm elections, and they're going to spend exorbitant amounts of money - even as the national committee struggles to keep the party from going bankrupt - on this suit instead of on support for Democratic candidates and for get-out-the-vote operations in November . . . and they're doing it to send a message to the Russians and warn them not to tamper with the midterms (a problem state election boards should be doing something about) and also to fire up a Democratic base to vote for candidates in the general election who more often than not will be candidates favored by the Clintons while the party tries to stop progressives in state and local primaries - even, I believe, in states and districts where progressives can actually win - and continues purging progressives from positions of power.  

Does this all make sense to you?  Because it sure doesn't make sense to me.

Even more nonsensical is how the DNC has a lot of damn gall to sue anyone for rigging the system when the DNC itself was so good at rigging the 2016 primaries and caucuses to prevent Martin O'Malley from gaining any traction and to prevent Bernie Sanders from getting anything with the traction he actually gained.  One progressive by the name of Amir Amini summed up this hypocrisy on Twitter quite nicely: "So the DNC is suing a foreign country for being unfair to the Hillary Clinton campaign in an election in which the DNC was caught undermining democracy itself, violating its own rules and colluding with the [Clinton] campaign and the [mainstream media] to stop Bernie."

And Martin.

Next time the DNC wants to rig a primary process and collude with the press and a corporate presidential campaign to put the least winnable presidential candidate forward in the general election, maybe they should consider getting a better firewall for their server.   

Also, DNC factotums should think twice before firing off any e-mails that may make someone like Hillary "look bad."

But then, Hillary didn't need any help with that.

Many progressives seem to agree that this suit is a way for the Democratic establishment, which backed Hillary Clinton to the hilt, to get back at those who stood between Hillary and the White House while continuing to refuse to acknowledge that it was a mistake to nominate her for President in the first place.  In other words, they're trying to . . . exact revenge?  Oh no, you don't, DNC!  After you screwed my candidate, you don't get to avenge being screwed yourself!  You don't have to leggo my Eggo, but keep your filthy hands off my Pop-Tarts! ;-)    

Mainline Florida

The Washington pundits have been talking about how reactionary Alabama ex-judge Roy Moore, who won the special Republican U.S. Senate primary this past week, is likely to win the special general election for Jeff Sessions' old Senate seat in December, and how that will make an already dysfunctional Senate even more so - or Moore so.   But meanwhile, in Florida, a Democratic victory in a special election could portend what's to come in 2018. 

Former Miami-Dade County Democratic chair Annette Taddeo (above) just won a special election to fill a vacancy in the Florida State Senate, and the seat, which is in a Hispanic-majority district, had been previously held by a Republican.  The Miami area's Cuban-dominated Hispanic population has been solidly Republican for years, so the victory of Taddeo - a Colombian-American - is a big deal.  It shows that more voters are beginning to doubt the GOP's effectiveness at governance at the state and local level, and it demonstrates just how serious some Democrats - maybe even DNC chair Tom Perez (ha!) - are at winning back state legislative offices in order to put themselves in a better position to win congressional (the word "congressional" refers to both the House and Senate here) and gubernatorial elections in 2018.  

Taddeo's victory doesn't give the Democrats a majority in the Florida State Senate, but it should go a long way toward energizing Florida Democrats as they look to 2018, when Democratic U.S. Senator Bill Nelson is up for re-election and the state's voters choose a new governor to succeed the insufferable Rick Scott, who is thankfully ineligible to run for a third term.  Taddeo is the seventh Democrat to flip a former Republican state legislative seat since Trump won the Presidency.  Martin O'Malley and Joe Biden - both potential candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination - campaigned for her.  They get it.  Let's hope Perez finally does as well.   

(P.S.  Also, in New Hampshire, Democrat Kari Lerner won a special election for a seat in the state House of Representatives, defeating her Republican opponent in a upset and becoming the eighth Democrat to flip a former Republican state legislative seat since November 2016.)

Gimme Some Money

Recent articles from Vox.com's Jeff Stein and Politico's Michael Whitney and happened to catch my attention.

Stein reported on Vox that the Democrats are, at this point, within striking distance of taking back the House of Representatives by winning 34 seats - ten more than they need - in 2018, according to recent polls.

But get this.  According to Whitney, they're also having trouble fundraising.

While it's inevitable in this age of the Citizens United decision that the Republicans would have more money than the Democrats, and fundraising numbers from both parties show that the GOP has twice as much money as the Democrats, Whitney notes that the Republicans are actually getting more money from small donors - $33 million compared to the Democratic Party's $21 million.

"This isn’t just about money," Whitney wrote. "Small-dollar donors are an important measure of how much grass-roots enthusiasm a campaign or organization has. They are the supporters who will show up to knock on doors, make phone calls and get out the vote. And since they don’t donate enough to reach campaigns’ individual contribution limits, you can return to ask them for money time and again - which frees campaigns from continually being on the hunt for new, deep-pocketed donors who can max out."  And since the Democrats lack such support, Whitney added for good measure, that only "threatens to prevent major gains by the party in 2018 and beyond."

The reason?  Messaging.  Whitney also said that Donald Trump has been masterful in giving voters a message of empowerment, promising to restore America's greatness and promising to restore American jobs.  He's speaking to a base that feels that power has shifted from under their feet and wants to hear a message that they can get their mojo back.  And that's exactly the message he gives them.  Progressives, both inside and outside the Democratic Party,  have offered a similar message; while Whitney has cited Bernie Sanders and his promise of a "revolution," I can point to Martin O'Malley and his pledge to "rebuild the American Dream."  But the Democratic National Committee doesn't use messaging like that; its e-mails asking for money only react to Trump's agenda without offering a positive message of their own.  Also, the party has been using scare tactics to get small donors to cough up a few bucks by saying that if you don't contribute to the Democrats, the Republicans will become even more powerful and everything you cherish and hold dear will be taken away from you.

The problem is that everything Democratic voters cherish and hold dear has been taken away from them - their livelihoods, their communities, their health care (not everyone can get coverage under the Affordable Care Act), their children's future.  You can't scare small Democratic donors in to giving money because most if not all of their fears have already been realized.

The right message makes all the difference.  Sanders got that in 2016.  O'Malley got it.  For all I know, Lincoln Chafee got it.  But Hillary ("Stronger Together"; "Love trumps hate") certainly didn't, and Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez doesn't seem to get it either.  The fact that the Democrats have a chance to take back the House (is anyone paying attention to governorships and state legislatures) is academic at this point, since the 2018 midterms are fifteen months away, and things could change.  But yes, they do have a chance.  A chance, however, only provides an opportunity when you take it.  Perez doesn't even seem to be trying to.

Right now, people are hanging their hats on Russia investigations or the possibility of brinkmanship with North Korea and wondering how much longer it will be before Trump loses his job.  I have a feeling that Tom Perez will lose his first. 

Big Sky Disaster

Strike two!

Montana voters chose Republican Greg Gianforte over Democrat Rob Quist in the special election to fill Montana's only U.S. House seat, meaning that the Democrats have lost the second of three U.S. House special elections since they lost the Presidency.  This loss was despite - or maybe even because of - the fact that Gianforte shoved a reporter asking him questions about the health care debate in Washington.  While a majority of the votes cast were mailed in in advance and it was too late for Democrats to capitalize on the issue, some progressives have charged that, had Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez gotten behind Quist early like he should have, Quist would be going to Washington and not Gianforte.

But it turns out that Quist had feet of clay.  According to the Billings Gazette, records from his home county, Flathead County, show that Quist has been sued by U.S. Bank after failing to pay back a loan and has been accused of fraud by a former bandmate in the bluegrass/country group Mission Mountain Wood Band, in which Quist became a local music legend.

So, not only are the centrist establishment Democrats screwed up, so are the progressives who are trying (unsuccessfully) to take the party back.  They can't even vet their candidates properly.

It has become painfully obvious that  the Democratic Party is no longer capable of getting its act together.  Two-thirds of voters surveyed say the Democrats are out of touch with the American electorate - that's a larger percentage than the number of folks who disapprove of Donald Trump's performance as President - and the party still hopes to rely on identity politics going into 2020, dividing the country's voters of race, creed, and color . . . and if the gender card is played, deal Hillary back in - and claim that America can be great again when we are stronger together.

Hey, Democrats - go to hell!

My mother is exasperated with me for kicking the Democrats when they're down, but I can't think of an institution more deserving of a gutter kick.  Look, I wanted to see the Democrats nominate a presidential candidate who could, you know, win, but the party tipped the scales for Hillary while it silenced her opponents for the nomination, dismissed anyone who was against Hillary as a bunch of malcontents, and ignored the party's in-progress collapse in down-ballot races despite warnings from Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley - two of Hillary's opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination - while offering nothing for the party's liberal wing.  Then after Trump won, the Democrats put the same establishment jokers in charge of the party, and now even the liberals are coming up with substandard candidates for office who can't win to save their lives.  Quist's ability to win more of a percentage of the vote in Montana than Hillary won in November 2016 is seen as a victory of sorts, but the truth is that he still lost!

The Democratic Party is dead.  Let it go the way of the Whigs.  Come on, Tom Perez, admit it - your party is done!  Pull the plug and put the party out of our misery.  

And if Sanders devotees don't call a convention for a new party, well, I don't want to know them. >:-(

The New Democratic National Committee Chairman

It's Tom Perez.

Although Keith Ellison and several other candidates for the post of Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman fought the good fight, the 447 members of the committee, who voted yesterday (the vote was not scheduled for today, as I had stated earlier), chose a party insider who has been loyal to the establishment and is seen to be friendlier to wealthy donors and to the Clintons than to the millions of people who backed Bernie Sanders and the dozen or so of us who were for Martin O'Malley.  (O'Malley, who made Perez his Secretary of Labor, Licensing and Regulation when he became governor of Maryland, wouldn't back Perez for the DNC chairmanship.  That should tell you something.)

The Democrats could have gotten someone new and fresh  - alas, South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg withdrew at the last minute - but chose instead a political hack who is seen, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, as "a reliable functionary and trustworthy loyalist by those who have controlled the party and run it into the ground."  Indeed - he blindly supported Hillary Clinton (that's the only way you could do it - blindly) in the 2016 presidential primaries (and O'Malley was clearly getting even by supporting Buttigieg, not that it mattered), and he's pretty much at Bill and Hillary's beck and call.  In fact, he advised Hillary Clinton during her 2016 primary campaign, and he suggested that she paint Sanders as the "white candidate" to build and shore up her support among minorities.  And isn't it weird that Hillary Clinton herself would put out a video message of resistance to Donald Trump on the eve of the DNC chairmanship vote to convince us that she's still relevant?  (She wants to run for President again.) 

Oh yeah, on a separate vote, a resolution that would have banned "registered, federal corporate lobbyists" from serving as at-large DNC members was rejected.  Money talks, and the people walk.

Although Perez made Ellison his deputy chairman to quell angry progressives and promised to go after the working-class and rural and exurban voters who backed Trump in 2016, most liberals realize that the Democratic Party no longer represents their interests (and hasn't since the Vietnam War ended) and are ready to bolt the party.  There have already been calls for a convention to found a new party . . . similar to the calls for meetings in Michigan and Wisconsin in 1854 that led to the Republican Party, which quickly supplanted the Whigs and recruited ex-Whigs Abraham Lincoln and William Seward, as well as the Frelinghuysen political dynasty in New Jersey, among others.  And the Huffington Post has been circulating a petition to make it happen.

I predict that Perez's elevation to the DNC chairmanship is going to accelerate a mass exodus from the Democratic Party and cause the first major change of the nation's two-party system in 160 years.  Any Democrat currently eyeing a White House run in 2020 will have to make a decision whether to stay with the old party or join the new one.  All Democrats now have to understand that they should either lead, follow, or get out of the way.  

We all know what the DNC chose to do. :-(

(Some good news: Stephanie Hansen won the state Senate special election in Delaware.)

The Crash Years

The United States is the Howard Cosell of nations. That is, we're so wrapped up in our own self-importance that we have no idea how much the rest of the world hates us, at least until we elect a dim-bulb conservative to be our President - then we get a sample of such antipathy.

Ironically, Donald Trump is causing antipathy among European nations for having no idea how important we are to them.  He's had to have Cabinet members like Defense Secretary James Mattis, quickly becoming the jewel in the tin crown of an administration (though I'm willing to give Secretary of State Rex Tillerson the benefit of the doubt for now, and new national security adviser H.R. McMaster looks to be a sensible guy), assure European leaders that the Trumpster will not pull back from the NATO alliance in the face of Russian expansion.  Oh yeah, and we're not out to grab Iraqi oil either.  

Also, Vice President Mike Pence went to Munich over the weekend to reassure fellow NATO members that the alliance is strong.  The fact that he's a heartbeat away from ultimate power couldn't possibly have reassured the Europeans, though, because whereas Trump is a vulgarian, Pence is just a rube.  He denies climate science and evolution, and he tried to regulate women and preserve legalized homophobia as governor of Indiana.  European leaders tend to be rather sophisticated, like a gourmet meal.  Mike Pence is the political equivalent of ham and raisin sauce. 

While the United States tries to avoid a collision with its own allies (can you really call them "friends"?), the Democratic Party is trying to avoid an internal crackup - a crackup that, I believe, is as inevitable as Hillary Clinton's perpetual campaign for the Presidency if Clinton stooge Tom Perez is chosen as the Democratic National Committee's (DNC's) chairman.  Perez will undoubtedly push the party toward the Clintons' corporate agenda and split the party down the middle.  Diana Price of Inquisitr.com made this point quite acidly in a recent column in which she also noted that, while the Russian government may very well have colluded with the Trump campaign, the Democratic e-mails uncovered, whether leaked by the Russians or by WikiLeaks acting alone, showed how the party establishment favored Hillary and was pulling every possible trick to ensure her nomination at the expense of other candidates, including Martin O'Malley and the front-running anti-Hillary, Bernie Sanders.

"It's the height of hypocrisy," Price wrote, "for the corporate Democrats and the DNC to complain about election manipulation when the DNC emails leaked verify that the DNC - and former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in particular - was gaming the primaries for Hillary Clinton."  Not only were debates limited, but - and this kills me - there was widespread voter disenfranchisement by reducing the number of polling sites in some areas and many voters were purged from the primary and caucus registers. Among other things.  Now that the election is over, Hillary backers in the party establishment are not only unrepentant, they keep ignoring O'Malley and disrespecting Sanders.  They even got angry at Sanders for proposing that less expensive Canadian drugs be legalized for importation into the United States, a bill amendment that every Republican and also thirteen Senate Democrats - including the heir apparent to the Hillary faction, New Jersey senator Cory Booker - refused to support.  Also, Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison. the "Sanders Democrat" in the DNC chairmanship race, has actually demanded that Sanders give his mailing list to the party establishment, which would most certainly be against the wishes of Sanders supporters.

So, imagine what will happen if Perez is chosen as the party chairman?   

So, even if the Russians worked in concert with the Trump campaign - and that is a very serious charge, and one that is grounds for impeachment should it be proven - that doesn't change the fact that whoever leaked these e-mails only proved that the Democratic establishment, by trying to silence the anti-Hillary members of their party and getting them to hold their noses and vote for Hillary in November, is more to blame for Trump's victory than the Kremlin.  If Sanders or O'Malley had been the Democratic presidential nominee and WikiLeaks or the Russians or the Trump campaign or whomever found evidence that the Democratic primary process was fair and clean and that rank-and-file Democrats were happy with the nominee, there would have been nothing for Trump to capitalize on, and, likely thus, no Trump victory.     

Price sums things up nicely:

"With the huge grassroots following behind Bernie Sanders, do you really want to push that argument that Sanders is not someone you want helping shape the Democratic Party, and, in fact, Sanders is someone who offers voters an alternative party to Democrats? This is yet another example of the arrogant thinking by the DNC that voters have to choose either their chosen corporate Democrat juiced into lobbyist interests or choose a Republican. Apparently, the DNC and establishment Democrats don’t realize they are promoting a mass exodus and the demise of their own party with that argument and are incapable of learning their lessons."

A Democratic National Committee chairman who serves the interests of the Clintons rather than the interests of the rank-and-file party members will surely trigger such a mass exodus the same way Whig squeamishness over slavery triggered a defection of its northern and western members to the nascent Republican Party in the 1850s.

At which point Martin O'Malley will do what Abraham Lincoln did in 1856 - tell his old party to screw themselves and join a new party, in the present case a party that Sanders will have already formed.