Tom Perez has put forward a cartoonishly neoliberal cast of foreign policy hacks, corporate and Israeli lobbyists and Wall Street consultants, reports Kevin Gosztola.
DNC Chair Tom Perez during Hillary Clinton campaign.
By Kevin Gosztola
The Grayzone
Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez has nominated dozens of lobbyists, corporate consultants, think tank board members, and former officials linked to Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns to serve on the Democratic National Convention (DNC) nominating committee this July.
Many of Perez’s nominees are vocal opponents of Senator Bernie Sanders and spoke out against his campaign when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2016.
Just as it did in 2016, the DNC appears determined to sabotage a Sanders nomination, foisting a collection of neoliberal and imperialist hacks onto the convention committee to hold back a popular rebellion against the policies of endless war and corporate free trade they have personally presided over.
Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez issued a list of individuals he nominated for the 2020 Democratic National Convention committees.
Let's examine some of the individuals. I'll initially focus on the nominees for the DNC Platform Committee.
Thread. pic.twitter.com/fVm41YClJQ
— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) January 25, 2020
Only a small percentage of those on the roster, such as Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen, are even remotely aligned or sympathetic to Sanders’ progressive agenda, and many of them are 2020 superdelegates.
Though the Democratic Party reduced the influence of superdelegates after a backlash from Sanders supporters, over 700 superdelegates will be able to vote as part of a brokered convention if Sanders is not the nominee after the first ballot. They would not have to vote for Sanders, even if he won a majority of pledged delegates in their state’s caucus or primary.
Sanders could secure enough pledged delegates to win on the first ballot and still find his agenda thwarted by the standing committees. For example, members of the DNC’s Platform Committee beholden to corporate interests could vote against including “Medicare for All” or a ban on natural fracking in the agenda of policies they plan to fight for in 2020.
A close look at the list Perez offers a gruesome vision of morally repugnant operatives rigging the game on behalf of a desperate and increasingly discredited party elite.
Torture Cover-Ups, Russia Fear-Mongering
Denis McDonough was nominated to chair the Platform Committee. He was Obama’s chief of staff during his second term. McDonough is senior principal for the Markle Foundation and a chair of the Rework America Task Force.
In 2018, McDonough partnered with Heidi Capozzi, senior vice president of human resources at Boeing, to form the Rework America Business Network. It included 11 founding members: Aon, Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), Boeing, Duke Energy, Kaiser Permanente, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, Stanley Black & Decker, Walmart, Zurich Insurance, and 21st Century Fox. The network received support from Google.
Acting on behalf of the CIA, McDonough pushed for more redactions in the torture report summary that was ultimately released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He was a close ally of CIA Director John Brennan and fought for Brennan when the Senate delayed his nomination over his past support for torture. He also advised Obama on how to develop the drone program, which involved a kill list of alleged terrorism suspects to be assassinated extrajudicially.
Perez nominated Jake Sullivan to be a vice-chair of the Platform Committee. Sullivan was a national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. He also worked as a deputy chief of staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was a senior policy adviser for Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
Sullivan is a member of the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Advisory Council, which also includes Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary; Bill Kristol, a neoconservative who pushed for the Iraq War; Michael McFaul, the former United States ambassador to Russia; Mike Morell, the former CIA director; John Podesta, former Clinton campaign chairman; and Mike Rogers, the former Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
As The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal has documented, the Alliance for Securing Democracy is a factory of modern-day McCarthyism, where it brands alternative media outlets as “vehicles for Kremlin propaganda” and paints actual people as Russian bots to discredit dissent against U.S. foreign policy.
An email chain in the “Podesta Emails” that WikiLeaks published in 2016 showed Clinton offering support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement if she was elected. It would have to pass some tests, but as Sullivan indicated, environmental protections were not required. “Enviro was not a test.”
Sullivan did not believe the Clinton campaign could limit contributions from lobbyists or their clients because “clients” might be difficult to define. They could advocate for stronger bribery laws to limit the political influence of donations on legislation, but that would be “really dicey territory” for Clinton, he added
Apartheid Israel Operatives
Bakari Sellers, Dan Shapiro, Wendy Sherman, and Meghan Stabler were each nominated to the Platform Committee. Each has defined themselves as a “pro-Israel” Democrat, providing reliable cover to the apartheid state that is increasingly unpopular among younger members of the party.
Reminder: Just an example of how Israel can bring parties together. @AIPAC pic.twitter.com/bpXJRd40
— Bakari Sellers (@Bakari_Sellers) July 26, 2012
In 2015, Sellers became a member of National Council of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He led an effort [PDF] in 2016 to ensure the DNC’s platform did not adopt language that Sanders supported, which would have acknowledged the Democrats had a responsibility to confront the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians in Gaza.
Quoting Clinton, Sellers stated, “We must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate, and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.” He added, “We have to be unified in fighting back against BDS.”
As a CNN contributor and former surrogate for Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, he has consistently attacked Sanders, weaponizing his identity to consistently insist the campaign of the Vermont senator has a “long way to go” with black voters. And when Sanders entered the 2020 race, Sellers reacted, “I don’t have a problem with Bernie getting in the race, ‘when is he getting out’ is probably a better question.”
Shapiro is a former U.S. ambassador to the state of Israel who opted to remain in Israel indefinitely with his family rather than return to the country he supposedly worked for.
Obama ambassador @DanielBShapiro openly supporting massacre of civilians caged in a ghetto for being the wrong religion. Meanwhile he is a settler in the country stolen from them. How depraved can you be? Go home Dan! pic.twitter.com/85II6MvP0H
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) May 22, 2018
In November 2019, he wrote a column for the right-wing Jerusalem Post championing the virtues of expanded U.S. military aid to Israel. When President Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, he argued it could help end the “conflict” between Israel and the Palestinians.
After Stabler was appointed to the Platform Committee, the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) congratulated Stabler, who is a board member. “A truly inspired choice of an inspiring woman.”
The lobbying group was founded in 2019, and Mark Mellman, the group’s CEO, attacked the Sanders campaign for embracing Rep. Ilhan Omar and activist Linda Sarsour and described them as “endorsers who hate Israel.” DMFI exists to prevent the BDS movement and Palestinian rights advocacy from gaining traction in the Democratic Party.
In 2016, Sherman, a former State Department diplomat and senior counselor for the Albright Stonebridge Group, was appointed by Hillary Clinton to serve on the Platform Drafting Committee. She voted against a platform amendment that would have merely acknowledged Israel engages in a military occupation. She also opposed removing language that suggested the BDS movement and anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations “delegitimize” Israel. “When these actions delegitimize Israel, or in fact, whether wittingly or unwittingly, create anti-Semitism, then we must say that is not a good thing,” Sherman declared.
The Albright Stonebridge Group is an influence peddling operation founded in 2009 by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In 2016, Albright said there was a “special place in hell” for women who would not support Clinton, and Albright is notorious because she supported crippling sanctions against Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of children.
Regime-Change Experts Defend the Corporate Order
Perez has nominated an array of U.S. government regime-change operatives to ensure the foreign policy establishment enjoys total control over the DNC.
James Boland, the president of the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (BAC) union which endorsed Clinton in September 2015, was nominated to the DNC’s Rules Committee by Perez. He is on the board of directors of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a regime change outfit President Ronald Reagan established after a political backlash against the CIA in the 1970s.
The NED overtly engages in global operations that stigmatized the CIA as a criminal enterprise when they were carried out covertly.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI), a NED subsidiary that also exists to fund regime change operations around the globe, has sent two members of its board of directors as nominees to the DNC standing committees: Elizabeth Bagley and Michael Steed.
Bagley is a former State Department official who worked as a Senate liaison for NATO “enlargement,” ramping up the new Cold War with Russia.
Steed is the founder of the Paladin Capital Group, an investment firm that appears to assist “homeland security” companies in their efforts to secure government contracts. Former CIA director and card-carrying neoconservative James Woolsey once advised Paladin. The state of New York has accused Paladin of “pay for play” corruption in their management of pension fund businesses. The firm settled with New York in 2010.
As Dan Cohen reported for The Grayzone, the NDI was involved in fomenting the uprising in Hong Kong.
Claire Lucas worked for the U.S, Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Innovation and Development Alliances (IDEA). She led efforts to expand collaboration with the private sector to achieve “development and US foreign policy objectives.”
As The Grayzone’s Ben Norton explained, USAID is a “central arm of Washington’s hybrid war on socialist and independent states around the world. It has a long and sordid history of funding ‘civil society’ groups and political opposition parties to topple the governments of designated enemies.” USAID has bankrolled the right-wing U.S.-controlled opposition in Venezuela to the tune of $435 million.
Wall Street Bankers, Corporate Lobbyists
To round out his cartoonishly neoliberal DNC committee, Perez has put forward three employees of the Dewey Square Group, a lobbying firm that has fought against several progressive reforms. Charlie Baker, the president and co-founder of DSG; Minyon Moore, a principal at DSG; and Maria Cardona, a principal at DSG.
Cardona was nominated to co-chair the Rules Committee with former Democratic Representative Barney Frank. She is a contributor to CNN and CNN en Español.
In March 2016, Cardona authored a column for Univision, where she invoked the boogeyman of Venezuelan socialism to frighten readers into rejecting the socially democratic policies supported by Sanders. She omitted the fact that the U.S. had worked to destabilize Venezuela since Hugo Chavez’s election in 1998, backing multiple coup attempts and imposing lethal sanctions.
Cardona repurposed the reactionary line of attack in December 2019, questioning Sanders’ “electability” in an op-ed for The Hill: “If [Elizabeth] Warren and Sanders remain among top Democratic tier (they will), Trump will continue to try to paint all Democrats as radical socialists who want to turn the US into Venezuela.”
Cardona worked for the Commerce Department as the lead communications strategist for the passage of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. She was a senior adviser and spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008.
In 2016, Frank was also the head of the Rules Committee and Sanders attempted to have him removed because he was openly hostile toward his campaign.
Frank is on the board of Signature Bank New York. In July 2018, The New York Times examined this little-known bank and how it became a go-to lender for the Trump family, as well as the family of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
Others nominated include former deputy secretary of labor for Obama, Chris Lu. In June 2016, he offered a tone-deaf answer about the TPP, calling it a “great opportunity for U.S. companies that sell products overseas.” This was Lu’s response to a question about the way Trump and Sanders spoke against trade deals that killed jobs.
Former U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp was nominated to the Rules Committee as well. The conservative Democrat and longtime corporate lobbyist is on the board of trustees for the McCain Institute, a Washington think tank that collaborates corporate executives, arms manufactures, and foreign government officials to advance the late Sen. John McCain’s imperialist legacy.
Carol Browner was a Clinton delegate on the Platform Drafting Committee in 2016, and she was nominated to help shape the platform again. Browner is also a senior counselor for the Albright Stonebridge Group.
Browner had a role in the Obama administration working on climate change policy. Along with other Clinton delegates, she voted against a ban on natural gas fracking; a carbon tax; keeping 80 percent of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground; a government test to block any energy infrastructure projects, which would significantly contribute to climate change; and a measure to halt the abuse of eminent domain by the fossil fuel industry.
While on the Platform Drafting Committee, Sanders delegate Dr. Cornel West was so taken aback that he condemned the “neoliberal rationalizations of corporate power” by figures like Browner during the meeting.
Veteran lobbyist Tonio Burgos was nominated by Perez to serve as vice-chair of the Credentials Committee. Burgos’ firm received nearly $1 million from Williams Companies to lobby for the fracked gas Constitution Pipeline.
The Podesta Zombie Rises Again
Podesta’s name has become synonymous with Democratic Party corruption since his emails revealed efforts to rig the 2016 primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, Perez nominated him to the Rules Committee.
Like Sullivan, Podesta is a part of the McCarthyite Alliance for Securing Democracy. He and other former Clinton campaign officials still blame Russia for their candidate’s loss and refuse to take responsibility for running a campaign that failed to garner enough electoral votes to defeat Trump.
In a leaked email from February 2016, Podesta agreed “in principle” that Sanders needed to be “ground to a pulp.”
“Where would you stick the knife in?” Podesta wondered.
Back in 2016, a Podesta email chain showed Perez recommended the Clinton campaign weaponize identity politics to defeat Sanders and stave off threats to their neoliberal control over the Democratic Party.
“When we do well [in Nevada], then the narrative changes from Bernie kicks ass among young voters to Bernie does well only among young white liberals — that is a different story and a perfect lead in to South Carolina, where once again, we can work to attract young voters of color.”
With Sanders surging among youth and people of color, Perez has summoned his roster of corporate and imperial hacks in one more desperate bid to “stick the knife in.”
This article is from The Grayzone.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Is the Democrat Party going to make the same mistake they did in 2016? Does nothing change? Maybe they are really part of our eroding democracy as well.
The DNC is doing exactly the same thing they did in 2016 and they will lose for exactly the same reason. The people of this country know we need to make significant changes but our oligarchic system won’t let it happen.
This readership generally harbors no illusions about the state of our society and the coercive controls that powerfully concentrated wealth exacts upon our political system and other tools of “democracy”—including “the press” and institutions of higher education. And, to add to the daunting nature of our prospects for a more just society, that “establishment” of wealthy “interests” is enforced via a lawless, unaccountable agency of global reach that is synonymous with Wall Street and stoops to any manner of heinous or reckless tactic to achieve its ends. A more just society would also have to overcome the inertia and propaganda represented by the State Department, the stink tanks, and the Pentagon’s war economy.
So it is with neither hope nor “belief” in anything other than an abiding sense that our common humanity requires us to seek justice for one another as we seek it for ourselves.
Sanders fell short of my sense of justice when he capitulated to Clinton. He downright pissed me off by catering to “Russiagate” and when calling Maduro a “dictator”. We can discuss what he should’ve done in 2016 or what he should do now (or Tulsi, for that matter). But the fact remains—neither he nor Tulsi will “defect” from the Democrats in 2020.
Tulsi more completely reflects my views, but Sanders should be respected for what is in my view a sincere fight for issues of great moral and practical import. He clearly has great grassroots support and represents the (by far at this point) best chance to oust Trump and his neocon ilk.
We say we need to expose the duopoly and retool with a new Progressive party. Could the impetus for a political movement be garnered through the Democrats rejecting a clearly decisive choice of the electorate in the primaries? I say we stick it hard to the Dems and the Establishment and come out in droves for the primaries. We have to make the DNC so clearly and unambiguously reject a clear and unambiguous landslide will of the electorate so enough people can ascertain the reality of the duopoly and act accordingly.
I know. Nothing will change and there’s no hope and real war is on the horizon…but at least perhaps we could glean the satisfaction of a “moral victory” over the bastards, however transient.
Amen. I will be voting and expect that vote to be overturned by this corrupt body. Let the people see their corruption in all its ugliness. And Wikileaks if your watching, get an insider to leak you some more of their emails!
As a Green voter I just sit back and laugh at the progress made since 2016
one hope if trump does get elected maybe the economy will collapse. if we have a depression the environment will be that much farther ahead and trump and the republicans can be blamed. me personally have been for the big d public ally since 74.
In case we needed another reminder (like we need the plague):
DNC = Democratic National Corruption
Slogan: “Moral Filth Writ Large”
When Perez was chosen as DNC Chairman, wasn’t it obvious that nothing within the organization had changed !
People are just cattle to be herded around, drove to the slaughter when a profit is to be made. Our elites just got sloppy at hiding it anymore.
They have he right o the moniker of morons.
Help…..
The Russians are destroying the DNC.
All democratic socialists and all who vote for them are Russian agents.
We all learned the hard way in 2016 that the DNC has its own agenda and no matter who the American people vote to put up as their Democratic candidate, it will be foiled by the DNC…..Bernie Sanders would have been the Dem nominee in 2016 and would have won over Trump – easily if the DNC hadn’t fiddled with the candidates and named their own: H Clinton. The DNC has its corporate money people to ‘thank’ so they will go with Biden, who is just another member of the political detritus in Washington. They are all political hacks working for their own agenda, not the one they should be: America and its people and environment.
You might also add if Biden is the nominee then Trump will most likely be reelected.
True. And every damn thing that Trump is getting away with doing can be placed at the feet of Hillary and the DNC. Polls showed that Bernie would have beaten Trump, but the fake opposition party would rather have Trump than Bernie.
CN is full of joy these days!!! Another blow to any resemblance of democracy in the “Democratic Party” as the DNC seems again to want to lose the 2020 election rather than let a moderately progressive (not really even antiwar) candidate beat Trump. Bernie Sanders is so far ahead of any pf the Dems so far standing, and young people seem keen to support him, as well as those already convinced, but this devious behavior of the “DNC” adds more gloom to any hope of improvement of the situation of the USA, and the world, for the future.
“radical socialists who want to turn the US into Venezuela.” Any resemblance of the USA to Venezuela (eg actual benefits to the majority of people and laws to help them) would be extremely welcome. Unknown in modern USA.
Podesta has nothing to recommend him, and the emails concerning the appointment of Cabinet members by Obama by following Wall Street advisers to the letter were very eye-opening in the 2016 release by wikileaks.
Tend to agree. The centrists would be better off from their point of view with Trump as they can hide their real right wing tendencies by criticizing and opposing him. Compared to Trump they look lefty though they aren’t. They are neo-liberal to the bone and very conservative on social issues- just lets tinker with the corporate health care system, and forget medicare for all.
With Sanders and people like the AOC et al in the saddle the centrists would look like what they are-DINOS- who if they were honest would flip over to the repugnant party.
Sanders would totally spoil their party and their political business model of sucking up to Wall Street and the MICC. They are so destructive to our society that they can be described in two adjectives- very unpatriotic and selfish; or using a Vermont expression – burdocks up the ass of progress.
Well, of course. That’s what Tom Perez was put there to do by Hillary. And it’s just a little opener.
I’ve said time after time since I first heard of it that the DNC passed an internal regulation early last summer that no candidate may be chosen who does not conform to the DNC’s definition of a good, long-term Democrat, party member in good standing, who propounds the party’s classic principals. They will show that Senator Sanders does not fit that description. He’s a “socialist” who deviates from party standards in many ways. They will pull that rule out no matter how many votes Sanders gets at the Convention.
I have only seen one article on the subject. How did it get so effectively hushed up?
And Obama has said he’ll enter the melee if it looks like Sanders is headed to be the convention’s choice.
Hillary and Obama represent not only the rot in the party, but raise the other subject I’ve hammered on for years: they were put in place by the MIC/CIA/FBI/AND a coterie of very, very rich NY/Hollywood people. Except for the latter group who will go for anyone backing the LGBT, the rest comprise the amorphous group called Deep State. Originally Deep State was all Right wing Republicans until, after the baby Bush debacle, they had no choice but to find a subservient candidate for 2007 who would run as the Democrat’s nominee. They found Two with name recognition and Democratic credentials, both minorities who would surely capture the presidency: Hillary and Obama. Foreign policy belonged to Deep State. Domestics could sputter along independantly. Deep State would retain control.
But for better or worse, after her unforeseen beating, Hillary retained control of the party’s mechanics, both the system and the people. 2016 was a profoundly nasty disaster that this time Deep State had again miscalculated, they had left the Democrats’ Establishment in Hillary’s hands. She had control. What she wanted was her neurotico/psychotic revenge. It was 2008 all over again. Anybody could beat Trump now, just like anybody could beat Bush! So why not give it to her closest friends. And they found Buttigeig for her.
Peter Buttigeig could still win and lose like the Queen did. That would hand America over to a neofascist, long-term dictator while the pussy-footed Democrats scream and wail, blaming it on Sanders and the Russians.
There has to be one brief moment in the quiet of the night when one intelligent Bernard Sanders, wrings his hands in the silence, because he knows.
Sorry, America. Bernie ain’t gonna make it no matter how much we want him. The Dems would be committing political suicide if they nominated him — all their big $$$ supporters would disappear overnight. Why do you think they instituted a rule that the nominee must be a (registered) Democrat?
PS The Dems are finished in any case. After they turn him (and probably all of his delegates – anybody remember the Mississippi Freedom Democrats from 1964?) out, the party base will most likely fracture. And after Trump roundly clobbers them in Nov. the rest will follow. I predict that the Repubs will increase their majority in the Senate and TAKE BACK THE HOUSE. Thus will end the era of Democratic Party prominence in national politics. I also predict that there will be no more Dem presidents. Ever. We are in a new epoch now people; an era of far-right/neofascism. Buckle up.
Thanks, Richard, you’re right on the mark (see my comment above.) Yes, we are Germany 1933 going on 1937! I’ve been researching that period for years for a novel. Anyone who says we’re not like them either fails to know one or the other of the 2 countries beyond the surface.
I have watched as the democrats have slowly committed suicide for at least the last 57 years. It appears I may not have to watch this fiasco very much longer.
The Democratic establishment had better learn from their 2016 mistake, or we’re going to have a repeat scenario in 2020 with even more dire consequences this time for all involved.
Is it too much to ask of them to honor the true will of the people?
YES. That is unAmerican!!
I don’t know how any sane person could be a Democrat. What with these absolute idiots in charge of the DNC, making decisions that go against what the constituents want. Super-delegates? Enough said.
Once again the democrats are shooting themselves in the foot by putting a line up that resembles the same republican group that we have in power now. It is becoming harder and harder to figure out which party is which . The democrats are showing that there is no leadership at all in the party. This is suffocating. They have had since 2016 and they come up with this???
why is this not frontpage news on Democracy Now, for example? Tom Perez is the prototype of the oily politician Chris Hedges talks about in explaining why so many support Trump.
Yes. And? This is just Tom Perez doing his job; I don’t hope anybody expected otherwise. I know that this is the game; you know it; so Bernie Sanders knows it double, and all the evidence is that he’s OK with it. He will dutifully endorse and promote whatever hack this machine anoints, and the liberal cattle will in turn dutifully vote for him or her. The only illumination here is how identity politics time and again serves to stifle actual reform, not to bring it about.
If instead your objective is to change something in the USA then step one, step zero rather, is to burn the Democratic Party to the ground and build something better for ’24 — you know, the thing progressives should have done right after the Democratic loss in 2016, but didn’t because Putin. Pathetic.
On the positive side, the entertainment value of a Buttigieg — Trump general election will be priceless.
Did Bernie ever actually join the DNC? I remember when they put him in charge of recruiting for the DNC after his ‘loss’ to Hillary that he was still a registered Independent.
You revealed them, reminded them, and exposed who they are, Kevin! The DNC and all their minions do not want anything to do with the party of FDR and JFK and that is a disaster for all of us. I do not agree with any of their proposals that I have seen. This article shows why.
So this will be the insurance policy to make sure Sanders never comes out of the Convention as the Democratic Party candidate for POTUS. The DNC would rather see Trump reelected as opposed to a Bernie/Tulsi ticket that could IMO dethrone the mad bomber. What is the point of elections when the outcome will be rigged? I suppose when the dirty deed is done the Platform Committee could
lead the Convention in a cheer: “Whose Deep State” “Our Deep State” One party for all and all for one party. This is the state of our “democracy.” No wonder Americans are so demoralized.
There is, after all, a reason why the Economist labels the US as a flawed democracy.
This is exactly what Bernie needs. He needs a knock down dog fighting the primaries. Then he will crush Trump.
“From your lips…”
This is sickening, but a concise description of the utter corruption and decadence of the American political system as represented in the so called Democratic Party. Perez, et. al. must be totally petrified of the Sanders campaign to rig the game in such a flagrantly blatant manner with such a large number of what can fairly be described as a political mafia. This is a scheme which would make the late Mayor Daley proud.
Hillary may be a political corpse as far as an actual run, but that corpse has multiplied into ghosts that will be haunting and fouling up the Democratic convention. These are the people whose failure to represent and appeal to working class Americans have given us the Trump.
We seem now to actually have a three party system; the Repugnants, the corporate centrist Democrats as represented by these bottom feeders and the Progressive wing of the party. I am ignoring the Greens, who on the Federal level are irrelevant; but useful locally.
Just when the US is approaching the level of a failed state; when climate change is threatening our future; and income inequality is approaching feudalistic levels. These selfish greedy retards insist on clinging to their failed positions and preventing any curing of our political ills.
This sordid affair unfortunately makes the establishment Democrats accusation of Trumpian corruption into sickening hypocrisy. They are birds of a feather.
I must commend the author on a thorough expose of this decadence. Anyone who wants to understand American politics should devour this.
Thanks for this detailed documentation of how the criminal wing of the Democratic party intends to sabotage progress for humanity, and continue its subservience to the Israeli war profiteers. Their absurdly blind eye toward Israel’s ongoing history of cruelty and crime says it all. Anti-Zionism is NOT anti-Semitism, no matter how much money people are paid, or how severely they are threatened, to say otherwise.
To Tom Perez it gets easier every day to believe you ran the last election for the democrats.
Good luck you are going to need it.!
Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. After 2016, I lost all faith in Bernie for not challenging Hillary at the convention following the Wikileaks disclosures. His promise to support the nominee doesn’t wash after all the cheating was exposed. He would have beaten Trump, but the DNC insisted on corporate sponsored warmonger from column B. The Oligarchy that controls both parties would rather have Trump reelected than have a genuine liberal in power. And I think Bernie will try to play sheepdog again, because TRUMP!
I’m still sending Tulsi money, even though I think she is making a big mistake by not running as an independent. She pulls the majority of her support from independents, disaffected democrats, and libertarians- basically everyone who is sick and tired of the Forever War, and the endless quest for a global empire. Considering 40% didn’t vote in 2016, I think the numbers would be on her side, and she’d finally blow up the utterly corrupted two party system. This article proves the Democratic Party is not reformable.
Right you are Scott. She is making a historic mistake, and that goes double for Bernie. The only way either or both can win is by going indy. Since they have both repeatedly committed against that…..well, you get the picture.
BTW, do you suppose HRC’s attack on Tulsi was precisely to head off any move by her to do just this?
How can you dare throw in such an intelligent grenade in the middle of a nice yes-yes party?
She’s the smartest person in the game. She’s the only person with a foreign affairs program unless you call the occasional “Oh, yes, and I’m opposed to war, too.” as a program; Bernie included! Her domestic program is designed with realism and the general public in mind.
And she doesn’t look or act like either a housewife or a loudmouth beauty queen.
I’ve also supported her from Day One and still do. Put a $20 in the pot or more if you can, less if you can’t, before the first of Feb. to see if she can get back on the platform as Yang just did. I was very disappointed that she and Sanders didn’t join up to create a 3rd party. I think they’d have won and flattened the Democrat Establishment. Now I’m not convinced anyone the Establishment allows (see my comment above) will be elected.
Nauseatingly disgusting. We must stop them with massive protests. What else can the average person do to combat such incredible stacking of the deck? More and more people will refrain from voting since this abhorrent behavior of the DNC flies in the face of their proclamations to “uphold our democracy.”