February 12, 2016

Wow! David Brock's Blue Nation slamming Bernie supporters over John Lewis. Hateful stuff there.

I have never been in a campaign in which the supporters of a candidate were treated with such disregard and disdain.

It wasn't pleasant being a Deaniac, but this is far worse.

I do not think John Lewis should have said what he did about not remembering Bernie. It made it sound like he was questioning his honesty. He should have just endorsed Hillary.

Here's the page from David Brock's newly acquired Blue Nation Review. Don't forget to read the comments. Some are almost threats.

NEW LOW: Civil Rights Legend John Lewis Getting Trolled by Bernie Supporters

By Leela Daou
February 11, 2016
8643 Shares

Positively mind-numbing to see anyone trying to question the integrity or judgment of a giant like Rep. John Lewis. See the instant outcry below (and we’ve included a few heinous examples to illustrate how low these trolls will go).

Jose Antonio Vargas
✔
@joseiswriting

You best not come for John Lewis. Regardless of whom u support (#feelthebern or #ImWithHer) do not come for the walking hero.
12:15 PM - 11 Feb 2016

230 230 Retweets
293

omar durazo @duraznomar

whew, if ppl try to come for john lewis #onhere…guys, there’s a chance today could be really unpleasant.
12:59 PM - 11 Feb 2016

mani Gandy
?@AngryBlackLady

John Lewis who got his ass beat in the 60s by cops is establishment bc he's in Congress, but Sanders who's also in Congress isn't?
The jig.

I will not quote some of the others.

I am sad to see the racism and smears about Bernie's honesty that are going on right now.

There is no need for it.

February 11, 2016

Superdelegates were meant to give less power to "insurgents", more to party's insiders.

From an article from How Stuff Works.

Superdelegate Pros and Cons

Superdelegates are simply "unpledged voters." Their vote represents their own choice, rather than the wishes of the voters, and these unpledged delegates can pledge their votes as they see fit.

Superdelegates have to consider how to use their votes carefully. They may:

Vote in step with how the voters in the majority of states voted
Vote in line with Democratic voters nationwide
Vote in favor of the candidate with the most pledged delegates, even if it is just a slim majority.

....What's the point of having superdelegates in the first place? Explains Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco, "You have superdelegates because … You don't want bleed-over from the Green Party, the independents and others in deciding who your nominee will be" (source: CNN). Brown cites the ability of undeclared or non-Democrat voters in some states to cast a vote in Democratic primaries or caucuses. The logic follows that if enough of these nonaffiliated voters cast ballots, voters outside the Democratic Party could decide the nominee.

Adding superdelegates to the convention provides a countermeasure against such an event. Since superdelegates are all registered Democrats (and usually elected officials), it's reasonable to assume they wouldn't vote contrary to Democratic Party lines. But to some, the power superdelegates have to sway a nomination flies in the face of a democratic process. "If the superdelegates go against the popular will of the voters, whoever emerges as 'victor' will enter the presidential election shorn of democratic legitimacy and devoid of electoral credibility" warned columnist Gary Younge during the 2008 race" (source: Guardian).

More details on how and why the Superdelegates began. It is from a review of
Reinventing Democrats:The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton

It was part of the power grab of the Democratic Party by the Democratic Leadership Council.

Game Plan

If you imagine the DLC as a team, then the captain would have to be Al From. A veteran of the Carter administration, From took over the House Democratic Caucus after the 1980 elections with visions of rejuvenating his ailing party. He had some natural allies. As Baer points out, there were at least three strains of Democratic pols who felt the party needed redirection---Southern Democrats like Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Lawton Chiles, neoconservatives like Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and neoliberals like Rep. Tim Wirth and Sen. Gary Hart. Although they came to their views from different angles, they wound up agreeing on many of the same positions: They believed that the Democratic Party should be tougher on crime and foreign policy, less spendthrift with entitlements, and less indulgent of entrenched special interests like civil servants and unions. They also thought that moving the party in this direction would "restore its electoral viability" with the middle class that had deserted it for Ronald Reagan.

How did a group of elite politicians and operatives transform a political party?

First, they gave themselves a little bit of distance. After several unsuccessful attempts to influence the party establishment from within, the reformers formed the DLC as an extra-party organization in 1985. This avoided what Bruce Babbitt referred to as the "Noah's Ark problem"---the need to satisfy diverse constituents by taking representative positions on behalf of each one. They could also raise their own money (which DLC honchos like Virginia's Chuck Robb were notably good at), start their own think tank (the Progressive Policy Institute), and publicize their own views without tangling with the cumbersome Party bureaucracy.

Second, they worked the rules. They pressured the party to create a new class of "super delegates" consisting of state party leaders and elected officials who, they hoped, would balance out the interest groups that had come to dominate Democratic conventions. They also lobbied to cluster Southern and Western state primaries on "Super Tuesday," so that candidates who were strong in that part of the country (especially conservative Southern Democrats) would get an early boost that could offset a poor showing in more liberal Iowa or New Hampshire.

More on superdelegates from Jeff Stein at Vox.

What are “superdelegates,” and what do they mean for the Democratic nomination?

What is a superdelegate, anyway?

As Elaine Kamarck writes in her book Primary Politics, the creation of superdelegates was a reaction to the messy 1980 Democratic convention, in which Ted Kennedy and his supporters challenged sitting President Jimmy Carter. Many Democrats felt that the democratization of the primary process had led to chaos, and resulted in many nominees that ended up losing. Therefore, they wanted to give party elites more of a say.

"We must also give our convention more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, and, in cases where the voters' mandate is less than clear, to make a reasoned choice," Jim Hunt, who headed the commission that considered reforming the party's rules, said at the time, according to Kamarck's book. "We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party."

Perhaps, as Hunt's quote suggests, the Democratic officials themselves believed this was a responsible way to ensure that the party nominated the right candidate. But it's much harder to believe that that they didn't foresee the undemocratic implications of bolstering the "decision-making power" of party leaders.[/blockquote

And one more paragraph from Vox:

Why the superdelegate system is still really undemocratic (and should be abolished)

Regardless of what happens in this election, the fact that a party establishment even could overturn the voters strikes many as transparently unfair.

February 10, 2016

Pros and Cons of Superdelegates and why the Democrats have them.

From an article from How Stuff Works.

My own opinion: I have mixed feelings about some of the purposes. I can see both sides in a way, but it would be too effective at keeping new people from determining how the elections go. That might keep change from ever happening if the superdelegates hunker down and refuse to change.

Superdelegate Pros and Cons

Superdelegates are simply "unpledged voters." Their vote represents their own choice, rather than the wishes of the voters, and these unpledged delegates can pledge their votes as they see fit.

Superdelegates have to consider how to use their votes carefully. They may:

Vote in step with how the voters in the majority of states voted
Vote in line with Democratic voters nationwide
Vote in favor of the candidate with the most pledged delegates, even if it is just a slim majority.

....What's the point of having superdelegates in the first place? Explains Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco, "You have superdelegates because … You don't want bleed-over from the Green Party, the independents and others in deciding who your nominee will be" (source: CNN). Brown cites the ability of undeclared or non-Democrat voters in some states to cast a vote in Democratic primaries or caucuses. The logic follows that if enough of these nonaffiliated voters cast ballots, voters outside the Democratic Party could decide the nominee.

Adding superdelegates to the convention provides a countermeasure against such an event. Since superdelegates are all registered Democrats (and usually elected officials), it's reasonable to assume they wouldn't vote contrary to Democratic Party lines. But to some, the power superdelegates have to sway a nomination flies in the face of a democratic process. "If the superdelegates go against the popular will of the voters, whoever emerges as 'victor' will enter the presidential election shorn of democratic legitimacy and devoid of electoral credibility" warned columnist Gary Younge during the 2008 race (source: Guardian).

More details on how and why the Superdelegates began. It is from a review of
Reinventing Democrats:The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton

It was part of the power grab of the Democratic Party by the Democratic Leadership Council.

Game Plan

If you imagine the DLC as a team, then the captain would have to be Al From. A veteran of the Carter administration, From took over the House Democratic Caucus after the 1980 elections with visions of rejuvenating his ailing party. He had some natural allies. As Baer points out, there were at least three strains of Democratic pols who felt the party needed redirection---Southern Democrats like Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Lawton Chiles, neoconservatives like Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and neoliberals like Rep. Tim Wirth and Sen. Gary Hart. Although they came to their views from different angles, they wound up agreeing on many of the same positions: They believed that the Democratic Party should be tougher on crime and foreign policy, less spendthrift with entitlements, and less indulgent of entrenched special interests like civil servants and unions. They also thought that moving the party in this direction would "restore its electoral viability" with the middle class that had deserted it for Ronald Reagan.

How did a group of elite politicians and operatives transform a political party?

First, they gave themselves a little bit of distance. After several unsuccessful attempts to influence the party establishment from within, the reformers formed the DLC as an extra-party organization in 1985. This avoided what Bruce Babbitt referred to as the "Noah's Ark problem"---the need to satisfy diverse constituents by taking representative positions on behalf of each one. They could also raise their own money (which DLC honchos like Virginia's Chuck Robb were notably good at), start their own think tank (the Progressive Policy Institute), and publicize their own views without tangling with the cumbersome Party bureaucracy.

Second, they worked the rules. They pressured the party to create a new class of "super delegates" consisting of state party leaders and elected officials who, they hoped, would balance out the interest groups that had come to dominate Democratic conventions. They also lobbied to cluster Southern and Western state primaries on "Super Tuesday," so that candidates who were strong in that part of the country (especially conservative Southern Democrats) would get an early boost that could offset a poor showing in more liberal Iowa or New Hampshire.

February 10, 2016

A picture of a political revolution. Amazing sight.

This is what a Political Revolution looks like

February 9, 2016

Past Shock: "the sense that recent history is reappearing at a troubling and lightning-fast speed"

This was written by Richard Eskow for the Campaign for America's Future. It was written in August of last year.

Eskow foresaw a lot that would be happening in this election year.

First he links to and quotes from an article at Politico

It’s one thing for Democrats running in red parts of the country to sound like Republicans on the campaign trail. It’s another when Democrats running in purple or even blue territory try to do so.

Yet that’s what’s happening in race after race this season.

Faced with a treacherous political environment, many Democrats are trotting out campaign ads that call for balanced budgets, tax cuts and other more traditionally GOP positions. Some of them are running in congressional districts that just two years ago broke sharply for President Barack Obama.

The article then gives some examples:

Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff, who’s running in a district that Obama won in 2012 and 2008, has started airing a commercial that strikes a tea party theme. It highlights his record as speaker of the state House of Representatives when, he says, he helped balance the state’s budget.

As Romanoff narrates, a graph of the nation’s soaring debt pops up on the screen. The image looks strikingly similar to one that appears in a Web video Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan released in 2011 to sell his controversial budget plan, though a Romanoff spokeswoman insisted that the campaign hadn’t borrowed from the former GOP vice presidential contender.

Eskow's words:

“Running as Dems While Sounding Republican.” Hey, What Could Go Wrong?

Past Shock

You’ve heard of “future shock”? These stories bring on a sensation that might be called “past shock.” That’s the sense that recent history is reappearing at a troubling and lightning-fast speed. These stories are likely to trigger a severe case of déjà vu in anyone who has followed U.S. politics for very long.

Democratic rhetoric began echoing GOP talking points in 1994 under President Bill Clinton – and Democrats lost control of the House. When Democratic rhetoric once again tacked right in 2010 under President Barack Obama, Republicans ran to their left with a “Seniors’ Bill of Rights” – and the Democrats lost the House once more.

They can’t lose it again, since they no longer hold it. But they can lose more seats, and they can give up the Senate, too.

He was right. We did lose the Senate a few months later.

They already have their work cut out for them. President Obama, their party’s leader, may very well spend the next 90 days defending renewed military action in Iraq. Hillary Clinton, the party’s presumptive 2016 candidate, is likely to spend the time between now and Election Day repeating her Republican-like, hawkish foreign policy talk. And these Democratic Congressional candidates will be repeating GOP economic talking points on the home front, too.

That’s not “change you can believe in” – unless you’re talking about a change in Senate leadership.

Eskow was prescient in some ways about this year's primary, but of course he could not address the fact that the populist message of Bernie Sanders is resonating so strongly.

We've been trying to tell that to the party for years now, that if you quit sounding like the Republicans you would get more attention from the voters.

February 7, 2016

Revised Iowa results: Hillary ahead by .25%. Is this the final?

From The Hill February 07, 2016, 01:36 pm:

Clinton hangs on in revised Iowa caucus results

The Iowa Democratic Party on Sunday updated the results of the Iowa caucuses after discovering discrepancies in the tallies at five precincts, but the final outcome remains unchanged.

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton still places first in the caucuses with 700.47 state delegate equivalents, or 49.84 percent, the party said in a statement.

Primary rival Bernie Sanders comes in second with 696.92 state delegate equivalents, or 49.59 percent.

The total net change gives Sanders an additional 0.1053 state delegate equivalents and strips Clinton of 0.122 state delegate equivalents.

Are they still reviewing or not?

February 5, 2016

It still matters who voted to invade Iraq. We can not forget. Aftermath is devastating.

When Democrats or Republicans try to excuse their vote for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I find the excuses hard to accept.

First they used the weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq, the immediate justification

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."[/blockquote

They even sent a letter to President Bill Clinton.

But then gradually the reason changed to Middle East Democracy, even if it had to be at the point of a gun.

In 2005 the DLC changed the goal in Iraq to Middle Eastern Democracy.

In December 2005 a DLC Idea of the Week memo totally changed and rewrote history when they declared that what happened in Iraq could happen elsewhere in the Middle East.

The United States must continue to use its still considerable influence to broker political compromises and help build national institutions based on the rule of law rather than factional interests.

......And if that can happen in Iraq, it can happen throughout the Middle East -- in Palestine, in Egypt, and even in Saudi Arabia.

In the end, that's the just and worthy cause we are fighting for in Iraq -- the cause our troops have suffered and died for -- and we urge Democrats in particular to look beyond our justifiable anger at the administration's many blunders and its stubborn refusal to admit them, and embrace that cause as our own.

It really did change us as a nation, and those who voted for it had to foresee at least some of the consequences.

Robert Fisk has written of Iraq and Afghanistan from his experiences there as a journalist.

From 2008.

Robert Fisk speaks of Afghanistan and Iraq. Wonders why we think we can win there?

We, of course, have been peddling this crackpot nonsense for years in south-west Asia. First of all, back in 2001, we won the war in Afghanistan by overthrowing the Taliban. Then we marched off to win the war in Iraq. Now – with at least one suicide bombing a day and the nation carved up into mutually antagonistic sectarian enclaves – we have won the war in Iraq and are heading back to re-win the war in Afghanistan where the Taliban, so thoroughly trounced by our chaps seven years ago, have proved their moral and political bankruptcy by recapturing half the country.

It seems an age since Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld declared,"A government has been put in place (in Afghanistan), and the Islamists are no more the law in Kabul. Of course, from time to time a hand grenade, a mortar explodes – but in New York and in San Francisco, victims also fall. As for me, I'm full of hope." Oddly, back in the Eighties, I heard exactly the same from a Soviet general at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan – yes, the very same Bagram airbase where the CIA lads tortured to death a few of the Afghans who escaped the earlier Russian massacres. Only "terrorist remnants" remained in the Afghan mountains, the jolly Russian general assured us. Afghan troops, along with the limited Soviet "intervention" forces, were restoring peace to democratic Afghanistan.

....And Obama and McCain really think they're going to win in Afghanistan – before, I suppose, rushing their soldiers back to Iraq when the Baghdad government collapses. What the British couldn't do in the 19th century and what the Russians couldn't do at the end of the 20th century, we're going to achieve at the start of the 21 century, taking our terrible war into nuclear-armed Pakistan just for good measure. Fantasy again.

Joseph Conrad, who understood the powerlessness of powerful nations, would surely have made something of this. Yes, we have lost after we won in Afghanistan and now we will lose as we try to win again. Stuff happens.

I found this article written by Fisk in 2010 as President Obama was pulling our troops from Iraq. It's not a pleasant read, but Robert Fisk never worried about that.

US Troops Say Goodbye to Iraq

When you invade someone else's country, there has to be a first soldier – just as there has to be a last.

Yes, officially they are there to train the gunmen and militiamen and the poorest of the poor who have joined the new Iraqi army, whose own commander does not believe they will be ready to defend their country until 2020. But they will still be in occupation – for surely one of the the "American interests" they must defend is their own presence – along with the thousands of armed and indisciplined mercenaries, western and eastern, who are shooting their way around Iraq to safeguard our precious western diplomats and businessmen. So say it out loud: we are not leaving.

Instead, the millions of American soldiers who have passed through Iraq have brought the Iraqis a plague. From Afghanistan – in which they showed as much interest after 2001 as they will show when they start "leaving" that country next year – they brought the infection of al-Qa'ida. They brought the disease of civil war. They injected Iraq with corruption on a grand scale. They stamped the seal of torture on Abu Ghraib – a worthy successor to the same prison under Saddam's vile rule – after stamping the seal of torture on Bagram and the black prisons of Afghanistan. They sectarianised a country that, for all its Saddamite brutality and corruption, had hitherto held its Sunnis and Shias together.

..... But the sickness continued. America's disaster in Iraq infected Jordan with al-Qa'ida – the hotel bombings in Amman – and then Lebanon again. The arrival of the gunmen from Fatah al-Islam in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian camp in the north of Lebanon – their 34-day war with the Lebanese army – and the scores of civilian dead were a direct result of the Sunni uprising in Iraq. Al-Qa'ida had arrived in Lebanon. Then Iraq under the Americans re-infected Afghanistan with the suicide bomber, the self-immolator who turned America's soldiers from men who fight to men who hide.

Anyway, they are busy re-writing the narrative now. Up to a million Iraqis are dead. Blair cares nothing about them – they do not feature, please note, in his royalties generosity. And nor do most of the American soldiers. They came. They saw. They lost. And now they say they've won. How the Arabs, surviving on six hours of electricity a day in their bleak country, must be hoping for no more victories like this one.

February 4, 2016

"What we can’t stomach is even the whiff of impropriety or error" Des Moines Register.

This newspaper endorsed Hillary Clinton. They are proud of their state caucus, and this article shows that. They can not tolerate that "something smells" in the Democratic party caucus count.

Editorial: Something smells in the Democratic Party

What happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period. Democracy, particularly at the local party level, can be slow, messy and obscure. But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy.

The Iowa Democratic Party must act quickly to assure the accuracy of the caucus results, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

First of all, the results were too close not to do a complete audit of results. Two-tenths of 1 percent separated Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. A caucus should not be confused with an election, but it’s worth noting that much larger margins trigger automatic recounts in other states.

Second, too many questions have been raised. Too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms and other problems. Too many of us, including members of the Register editorial board who were observing caucuses, saw opportunities for error amid Monday night’s chaos.

The Sanders campaign is rechecking results on its own, going precinct by precinct, and is already finding inconsistencies, said Rania Batrice, a Sanders spokeswoman. The campaign seeks the math sheets or other paperwork that precinct chairs filled out and were supposed to return to the state party. They want to compare those documents to the results entered into a Microsoft app and sent to the party.

The article points out that Andy McGuire, Iowa Party chair, doesn't want to discuss, compare, or analyze.

McGuire knows what’s at stake. Her actions only confirm the suspicions, wild as they might be, of Sanders supporters. Their candidate, after all, is opposed by the party establishment — and wasn’t even a Democrat a few months ago.

The article calls for a balance between tradition and transparency.

February 3, 2016

Every time the party's left raises their little pointy heads and makes noises....this stuff happens.

First off, the meme that we supporters of Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders himself are not Democratic enough really needs to stop. It's ridiculous and it's harmful to the party's future success.

Secondly instead of loudly proclaiming victory when the totals for the candidates were only .2% apart, it would be more gracious to acknowledge a worthy opponent for a little while as well as mentioning his supporters enthusiasm. It would not hurt the winner, and it would ease the way for hard feelings to soften.

It's like the party leaders have their standards and rules and talking points, and they don't need the rest of us.

You can't put people down and question their intelligence for a year, and then expect them to be there and fall in line when needed.

I was called "fringe" and worse when my late hubby and I supported Dean. We were accused of being cultlike and True Believers. It wasn't as bad when we supported Obama in 2008.

There has been name-calling by the right wing of the party even as far back as 2000. Gore tried being populist but was dragged back to the right. And they left him hanging along with Florida's hanging chads.

It still goes on. Look at what happened in early December 2013 with the Third Way attack on Elizabeth Warren.

Hunter at Daily Kos wrote about why this happened. He posted a chart showing the Board of Trustees of the Third Way. He labeled it.

Why the Third Way hates Senator Elizabeth Warren

The obsessive centrists of the punditverse were abuzz today with praise for supposed centrist Democratic organization Third Way and their grumbling op-ed condemnation of Democratic liberal populism in abstract and "economic populists" like Sen. Elizabeth Warren in particular.

But why would the Third Way, a very reasonable and centrist organization that just wants both parties to get along and agree to cut Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs be so very worked up about Elizabeth Warren, Wall Street reform, and the mere thought of breaking up large banks? Worked up enough to launch an apparently coordinated effort against those things?

The chart is self-explanatory.

There's a reason that those in the Democratic Party who call themselves "centrists" or "moderates" have had much to say about those of us on the left for years now.

We throw a wrench into their corporate pursuits for the party, and it annoys them.

Howard Dean recognized this in 2010. His words still remain in my mind. He was 100% right.

From the Washington Post 2010:

Dean at progressive conference. Time for Democrats to 'behave like Democrats'

Dean, in a fiery speech Tuesday at the America's Future Now conference, gave voice to frustrations on the left that President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress have not used their big majorities to pursue a more progressive agenda. "We are done with putting people in office who then forget who got them there," said Dean, a former Democratic National Committee chairman.

"You did your job," Dean added. "You elected Barack Obama. You elected a Democratic Congress. You elected a Democratic Senate. And now it's time for them to behave like Democrats if they want to get reelected. They have forgotten where they came from -- and they haven't been here that long."

Dean echoed other progressive leaders who opened the conference Monday, expressing dismay, even anger, at the White House and Congress, saying they have been too timid and compromising on issues such as health care, the economy, climate change and banking reform.

He went back to being a centrist spokesperson.

I think we have made a difference by not letting these think tanks get away with words against liberals. It seems there is now less of it. I think it is because through the years we called them out on it. With the TPP looming with Democrats' support..we need to speak out and not let them silence us with insults.

Richard Eskow spared no words either right after the 2010 losses.

Resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine or Keep Listening to the Usual Suspects

After last night's rout, what are these experts advising? You guessed it: more of the same so-called "Centrism." That's an odd word to use for policies that most Americans oppose, like cutting Social Security or allowing bankers to enrich themselves by endangering the economy, but theirs is an Alice-in-Wonderland world.

Real centrists would defend Social Security and do more to rein in Wall Street, since those positions are popular across the political spectrum. It's a good thing the president said today that he wants to spend more time with the American people. Bankers and the Deficit Commission aren't "centrists" where most Americans live.

David Brooks had some strong words for the liberals in the party in 2007. The DLC posted the article prominently at their website. Here is the quote from Brooks at the NYT.

The Center Holds

The fact is, many Democratic politicians privately detest the netroots’ self-righteousness and bullying. They also know their party has a historic opportunity to pick up disaffected Republicans and moderates, so long as they don’t blow it by drifting into cuckoo land. They also know that a Democratic president is going to face challenges from Iran and elsewhere that are going to require hard-line, hawkish responses.

I would have ignored David Brooks and considered the source, but the then alive DLC posted it at their site.

When Tim Kaine was party chairman in 2006 he had some words about blogs and his intention to pay them no attention. Guess he did not realize he was missing out on a lot of good information.

From the Washington Post:

Blogs Attack From Left as Democrats Reach for Center

"Blogs can take up a lot of time if you're on them," Kaine said to reporters Thursday. "You can get a lot done if you're not bitterly partisan."

The Virginia Democrat said he will not adjust his speech to placate the party's base. "I'm not anybody's mouthpiece or shill or poster boy for that matter. I'm going to say what I think needs to be said and they seem very comfortable with that."

From the same article a Democratic lobbyist made it clear that liberals were needed for their money and activism, but the party should not cave to their demands.

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

And of course Fox News Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers had a lot to say in 2006 about how the liberals were becoming so shrill.

From USA Today:
Election signals decline of old school liberalism

It's more glacial shift than radical revolution, but change is afoot in the Democratic Party.

In a low point in Democratic Party history, Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey was banned from speaking at the 1992 Democratic Convention for being opposed to abortion rights. This year, his son, Bob Casey Jr., who holds the same views, was actively recruited by that same Democratic Party and unseated Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.

This was a welcome move in a party that is home to vocal and organized far-left activists and bloggers who have grown increasingly shrill and threatening toward moderate and conservative Democrats. They also have excoriated former president Bill Clinton's brand of centrist politics. They argue for "party discipline," best exemplified by their jihad against Connecticut's Sen. Joe Lieberman for deviating from the party line on the Iraq war. During the past election for Democratic National Committee chair, delegates booed former congressman Tim Roemer of Indiana because he, too, opposes abortion rights.

When they attacked Elizabeth Warren for wanting to expand Social Security, the blogs and posters online hit back hard. That is how it should be. The think tanks who are not really Democrats at all but are led by investment bankers and CEOs will continue to undermine the left, the liberals. But if we speak out they won't be so noisy about it.

There are signs we might be getting across our point that what we really want is for the party to stand up and speak out for the people....not the corporate world.

I guess I'm like a broken record, but it's pretty serious when a party shuts out its left.

I have been a Democrat since the day I could vote for the first time. Bernie may have an I after his name, but he's one of the best and strongest Democrats I've ever seen.

Iowa was an amazing feat for a 73 year old senator from a tiny state. The fact that he raised another million dollars soon after the caucus ended should indicate that he has the funds to be in this for the long run. I know I am.

I would like to once again be considered a Democrat, but then if that's not going to happen I can deal with it.

(Part of this is reposted from a couple of years ago, part is new)

February 1, 2016

2 videos from Tom Russell's album of immigrants coming to and immersing in America. Lovely songs.

I found part of the album on You Tube, with two of my favorite songs from it.

About the album and Love Abides.

Published on Oct 25, 2012

From Tom Russell's great album "The Man From God Knows Where," which uses the talents of several of our best folk singers and songwriters to create a musical collage depicting the journey to and across the US and assimilation into American culture.

I had just heard Iris Dement for the first time in her theme song for The Leftovers. This is my favorite from the album. Also her theme song "Our Town" from the last episode of Northern Exposure.

She and Tom Russell sound good.



Another great song from this video of an immigrant's journey is Throwing Horseshoes at the Moon. His whole album is powerful and so descriptive of such a journey.

Tom Russell has invited wonderful guest artists and excellent back up musicians to make a great album, "The Man From God Knows Where", released in 1999. Tom traces his roots back to Ireland and Scandinavia. The family tree isn't perfect. The songs depict his heritage, warts and all. Iris DeMent joins Tom in this duet, "Throwin' Horseshoes at the Moon" and is an indication of the quality of the artistry on the album itself. There are historical photos and information on the liner notes, which almost becomes a mini-book. Russell has gone 'all out' to make a spectacular album. Enjoy!

Looks like you have to follow on to view this one on the You Tube site.

The entire album is up in segments at You Tube. I downloaded it from Emusic years ago, and its gets a lot of listening.