DNC DCCC
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tag 2004?
david hogg GONE? KEN MARTIN 1 26
not exactly slapp, but
rush suess dccc on rape and beck (sues killed young girl) fight free speech
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Donald Trump and his Department of Justice's efforts to attack voting rights are facing a new legal threat in South Carolina, according to a letter obtained by the Post & Courier newspaper.
The DOJ is in the process of requesting that states purge their voter rolls of individuals flagged for removal by a federal audit, a move the administration says is meant to target voter fraud and to "ensure ineligible people are kept off state voter rolls and that only citizens are voting." Critics, conversely, have decried this as an effort to target lawfully registered voters. The agency has sent draft letters of this agreement to several states, including South Carolina.
On Friday, the Post & Courier reported on a letter sent to South Carolina's office of elections director, Jenny Wooten, from the Democratic National Committee. In it, the DNC warned that such a purge of voter rolls could inevitably lead to properly registered voters being removed, in violation of the National Voter Registration Act, and that it was prepared to sue the state if it agreed to the federal government's demands.
The letter further alleged that conducting a purge of the state's voter rolls "would harm the DNC and its members," and require the committee to "divert resources" intended for voter outreach efforts to identifying and re-registering any unlawfully purged voters.
DNC Chair Ken Martin said that the DOJ's effort amounts to a “big government power grab," attempting to bring control of voter rolls under federal oversight, despite the Constitution allocating that power to the states.
“The DNC won’t stand idly by as the Trump DOJ seeks access to South Carolina voters’ sensitive information and puts eligible voters at risk of being wrongly purged from the rolls,” Martin said in a statement to the paper. “Which is why we are calling on the South Carolina State Election Commission to stand up for South Carolinians and reject the Trump administration’s illegal agreement.”
As of Friday, the South Carolina Election Commission had taken no action in response to the DOJ's request.
"Nothing has happened to this point, and nothing will happen without it going through our commission in a public meeting," spokesman TJ Lundeen said in a statement to the paper.
The Trump administration's attempts to seize election authorities from the states are among the numerous efforts to undermine free and fair elections that experts and pundits have raised alarms over.
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How much of the money raised by these groups actually makes it to candidates and party committees?
After subtracting these massive operational costs—the payments to Mothership, the fees for texting services, the cost of digital ads and list rentals—the final sum delivered to candidates and committees is vanishingly small. My analysis of the network's FEC disbursements reveals that, at most, $11 million of the $678 million raised from individuals has made its way to candidates, campaigns, or the national party committees.
But here's the number that should end all debate:
This represents a fundraising efficiency rate of just 1.6 percent.
Here's what that number means: for every dollar a grandmother in Iowa donates believing she's saving democracy, 98 cents goes to consultants and operational costs. Just pennies reach actual campaigns.
Why the Party Looks the Other Way
This parasitic ecosystem could not thrive without the tacit approval of the Democratic establishment. The relationship between the Mothership network and the official party is not adversarial; it is deeply symbiotic.
The firm's founders are, as noted, alumni of the DCCC. They didn't just bring their contacts; they brought the "churn and burn" playbook, which was developed and honed inside the party's own campaign arm. They simply privatized the party's dirtiest tactics. This is not a rogue operation; it is an outgrowth.
While the network keeps most of the money it raises, it maintains the relationship by funneling a small portion back to the party's central committees. Of the paltry $11 million that makes it to campaigns, approximately half goes to the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC. This provides the party with a trickle of revenue and plausible deniability, allowing it to benefit from the fundraising without taking direct responsibility for the deceptive tactics. In return, the network gains a veneer of official legitimacy.
The DNC’s notorious reputation for cutting off its nose to spite its face
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Current chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party Ben Wikler on Sunday officially threw his hat in the ring to take over the national party, leading with a promise to put the working class at the center of its organizing efforts following a crushing defeat to Donald Trump's far-right Republicans in November's election.
"If we're going to take on Trump, Republican extremists, and move our country forward, the Democratic Party needs to be stronger," Wikler said in a statement. "I'm running for Chair of the Democratic National Committee to unite the party, fight everywhere, and win."
With the term of current Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison expiring in the new year, Wikler said his focus will be on lifting up the needs of working-class people, improving communication strategies, and running a more aggressive political operation.
"The soul of the Democratic Party is the fight for working people," Wikler said. "Ours is the party that built the middle class, that won breakthroughs on civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights, freedom and opportunity for all—and has so much more to do."
Wikler, who got his start in state-level politics in his home state and later played a leading role at the national progressive advocacy group MoveOn, notes that while Trump and the Republicans made gains across the board against Democrats in the 2024 election, the swing was much less in Wisconsin where Wikler has rebuilt the party over recent years, taking back majorities in the state legislature and other key fights.
"What has made a difference in Wisconsin," he said, "can make a difference everywhere. We need a nationwide permanent campaign."
In an interview with the New York Times published Sunday, Wikler acknowledged that a significant explanation about the Democratic loss of the presidential race—as well as Republican's winning control of both chambers of Congress—was that too many voters simply don't believe Democrats take their economic concerns seriously or think the party is capable of addressing them.
"It's clear from this election that there are many voters, especially those hardest hit by rising prices, those who experienced the pandemic-era financial support slipping away, who voted primarily on the economy," he said. "We’ve seen in the United States and worldwide if you have to break pills in half to be able to afford your groceries, that is going to be the top-of-mind issue when you go to the ballot box."
The Democratic Party can win, Wikler argued, "when voters know that we're the ones fighting for them against those who will seek to rip them off to add an extra billion dollars to their bank account."
Calling Wikler a "party builder," The Nation's political correspondent John Nichols, also a Wisconsin native, said Wikler joins "an increasingly crowded list of contenders for the post, including Minnesota DFL chair Ken Martin, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and New York state Sen. James Skoufis."
In response to the announcement, former labor secretary Robert Reich gave his endorsement to Wikler in a Sunday blog post, calling him someone who "can turn the Democratic Party into a party that's once again on the side of the little guy."
With the Democratic Party in the midst of deep soul-searching following Vice President Kamala Harris' devastating defeat to Trump, progressives have called for a major rethink. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who ran for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination both in 2016 and 2020 as a challenge to its corporate leanings, said last week that getting big money out of politics should be a top priority for the party's leadership going forward.
"If the Democratic Party is to become a democratic party, the first job of a new DNC Chair is to get super-PAC money out of Democratic primaries," Sanders said. "AIPAC and other billionaire-funded super-PACS cannot be allowed to select Democratic candidates."
Former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, a close Sanders' ally, said the same on Sunday, shortly after Wikler's announcement. "Every candidate running for DNC Chair must commit to getting dark money and corporate money out of the Party. Period," tweeted Turner.
Sanders, Turner, and other progressive voices have been adamant that without a real strategy to win back working-class families, the Democrats are lost.
Randi Weingarten, union president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Wikler "understands how to organize and communicate."
Reich embraced Wikler's call for a new, bolder organizing strategy as well as his record in Wisconsin. "Wikler organized and mobilized voters in a state that Republicans had rigged to ensure total dominance and control. Ben unrigged that system," Reich wrote. "He turned Wisconsin into a year-round organizing and fundraising powerhouse, winning seven of the last 10 statewide elections since he took over."
Reich also explained why it's important that someone like Wikler be the replacement for the outgoing Harrison, a former lobbyist and a staunch ally of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party establishment.
"For years, the Democratic National Committee has been little more than a fundraising machine, which means it's been tilted toward sources of big money—billionaires, big corporations, and Wall Street," argued Reich. "That's precisely the problem. That's why the DNC cut Bernie Sanders off at the knees when he ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016. That's why starting in the 1980s the Party began turning its back on the working class."
"There's no way the Party can speak for the majority of working people in America," concluded Reich, "when it's reluctant to bite the hands that feed it."
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Nevada Democratic Party Chair Judith Whitmer said Friday that progressives won't stop working to stem the flow of untraceable cash into national primary contests after the DNC Resolutions Committee blocked a vote on her proposed dark money ban for the second time.
Whitmer, a DNC member, told Common Dreams that "time and time again, we've watched 'dark money' used to silence the voices our party most needs to hear."
"Our party and our country need strong Democratic candidates willing to speak truth to power, but when their messages can be drowned out in a flood of untraceable expenditures, many candidates are questioning why they should even run," Whitmer said. "Restoring faith in our democracy has never been more urgent, and that all-important work should start in our own primary elections."
Whitmer sponsored the proposed dark money ban alongside fellow DNC member James Zogby, who previously served as chair of the resolutions panel. If approved, the resolution would have prohibited dark money donations in Democratic primary contests and established guidelines for investigating any violations of the ban.
On Thursday, members of the DNC Resolutions Committee—who likely faced pressure from DNC leadership—stayed quiet when the proposed ban was put up for consideration, so the measure did not receive a vote. Had the committee approved the proposal, which was backed by dozens of DNC members, it would have gone to the full DNC for a vote this weekend. (The DNC doesn't publicize membership lists for its standing committees.)
"Although we were disappointed that the Resolutions Committee once again chose not to move our resolution forward, we will keep fighting to make our primaries a fair and level playing field for all candidates," Whitmer told Common Dreams.
Democratic leaders, including President Joe Biden, have repeatedly railed against the scourge of dark money, decried its corrupting influence, and pledged to rein it in—only to balk at pressure for substantive action.
The party's platform, adopted in 2020, states that "we will bring an end to 'dark money' by requiring full disclosure of contributors to any group that advocates for or against candidates."
Yet as the DNC leadership, headed by Chair Jaime Harrison, refuses to act on its rhetoric—and as congressional Republicans block broader legislative efforts to curtail dark money—Democratic incumbents continue to benefit from untraceable donations, which are frequently used to undercut progressive challengers.
Last year, the newly formed dark money group Opportunity for All Action Fund spent around $600,000 to bolster Reps. Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.), Dina Titus (D-Nev.), and Danny Davis (D–Ill.).
All three went on to defeat their progressive primary opponents and win reelection. That pattern played out across the country, though some candidates—including Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), who was aggressively targeted by AIPAC's super PAC—were able to overcome torrents of opposition spending and prevail in November.
According to an August 2022 study by the Wesleyan Media Project, nearly 70% of pro-Democratic Senate ads up to that point in last year's election cycle were funded by groups that don't disclose any of their donors.
"Letting our primaries devolve into auctions, rather than elections, has done more than simply create an unequal and unfair playing field," Whitmer said during the DNC Resolutions Committee's last gathering in September. "In races around the nation, we've seen these underhanded tactics used to silence debate on critical issues, with competing views buried under an avalanche of dark money-funded messaging."
At this weekend's DNC meeting in Philadelphia, members are expected to approve a presidential primary calendar that would bump South Carolina up to the first-in-the-nation primary slot—a plan that has drawn criticism from some progressives.
But the issue of dark money is likely to be brushed aside once again.
While Democrats in Congress continue to push legislation to curb dark money across the board in federal elections, progress will be virtually impossible with a closely divided Senate and a Republican-controlled House, leaving internal party rule changes one of the only viable paths toward genuine campaign finance reform in the near future.
Larry Cohen, a DNC member and the board chair of Our Revolution, wrote in an email Friday that the DNC and state-level Democratic parties "have extensive rules relating to the nominating process, which provide many opportunities to block dark and dirty money."
"What happens inside the Democratic Party and inside party caucuses of elected Democrats is frequently ignored by progressives, who are generally more comfortable protesting and working solely outside the party. Of course, protest is essential, and new party-building is fine," Cohen wrote. "But for those of us who believe we must fight in every possible way to advance progressive issues and win real power, we ignore party reform at our peril, even as we demand broader electoral reforms, such as fusion and ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, and more."
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The DCCC's Long, Ugly History of Sabotaging Progressives
The latest attacks on left challengers are no fluke: For decades the House Democratic fundraising body has put corporate, big-money interests first.
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February, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) attempted to undermine Democratic primary candidate Laura Moser out of fear she’s too far left. The Houston journalist and activist is running in Texas’s 7th District on a platform of single payer, gun control and reproductive rights. In a move typically reserved for Republican opponents, the DCCC—whose mission is to fundraise for Democratic House candidates—posted opposition research it had conducted on Moser. Citing her recent move to Texas from Washington, D.C., and her campaign’s payments to her husband’s D.C. research firm, the memo portrayed her as corrupt and a carpetbagger.
Despite these attacks, Moser came in second in the primary, moving on to a May 22 runoff.
This could well be the year the Democrats take control of the House for the first time since 2010. Of the 90 seats the party is targeting for November, just 24 need to turn blue, a prospect made all the more exciting by the Bernie Sanders-inspired deluge of progressive candidates around the country. But the DCCC is emerging as that movement’s counterweight, if not downright enemy.
From the May 2018 issue
TURNING THE HOUSE PURPLE
The DCCC, chaired by Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), has teamed up with the House’s centrist Blue Dog caucus to recruit candidates for the 2018 elections, attempting to replicate the 2006 strategy of then-DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel. Democrats did win back the House in 2006 (arguably due as much to George W. Bush’s historic unpopularity as to Emanuel), but the influx of conservative Democrats contributed to a watering down of the Affordable Care Act and Wall Street reform, a shift to austerity, and, eventually, legislative stalemate.
That doesn’t seem to bother the DCCC.
The Committee’s recruits are heavily weighted toward military veterans and former national security officials. Elissa Slotkin, a DCCC-backed candidate in Michigan’s 8th District, worked for the CIA in Iraq under John Negroponte before moving to George W. Bush’s National Security Council and then Barack Obama’s State and Defense Departments. Slotkin was an architect of the failed “surge” strategy in Iraq and continues to claim it as a success. As recently as 2014, she praised Negroponte—whose claim to fame is covering up the atrocities committed by Reagan-supported right-wing forces in Central America.
The DCCC’s candidates also skew toward the well-heeled and well-connected. An heir to a liquor fortune, a millionaire philanthropist, a furniture company heir and former State Department official, the former executive of a shoe company once accused of labor abuses: All appear on the DCCC’s 2018 roster. Angie Craig, running in Minnesota’s 2nd District, was an executive of a powerful medical technology company and spent her time there funneling money to mostly Republicans.
In Nebraska’s 2nd District, the DCCC lent a hand to Brad Ashford—a former Republican who favors abortion restrictions—at the expense of his more progressive primary challenger Kara Eastman, who supports reproductive rights, Medicare for All and other progressive policies. Over in Virginia’s 2nd, the DCCC swung in early behind businesswoman Elaine Luria, a military veteran who twice voted for her Republican opponent, over Karen Mallard, a union member who supports a $15 minimum wage and universal healthcare.
DCCC officials and alumni have also reportedly stepped in to nudge progressive candidates out of several House races. In Colorado’s 6th, a Democratic-leaning swing district where Republican Rep. Mike Coffman is considered vulnerable, party officials are reportedly trying to clear the field for DCCC-trained former Army Ranger Jason Crow. Levi Tillemann, a progressive candidate whose campaign is managed by a Sanders 2016 alum, says he was asked in January by Minority Whip Steny Hoyer—a former DCCC official and major fundraiser—to exit the race because Democratic leaders had decided “very early on” to back Crow.
In Pennsylvania’s 7th District, the DCCC pressured out a progressive because they felt their pick would be a better fundraiser. In California’s 39th, it was to make way for a lottery-winning lifelong Republican who switched parties because he believes the Democrats are closer than the GOP to Reagan-era Republicanism.
The DCCC appears reluctant to support progressives even when they present the only opportunity to flip a red seat. Last year, the Committee largely stayed away from the special election for Montana’s at-large district, spending a mere $340,000 on populist Rob Quist’s surging campaign, compared to the millions it poured into centrist John Ossoff’s bid for Georgia’s 6th district.
In the April 2017 special election for Kansas’ ultraconservative 4th District after Mike Pompeo was tapped as Trump’s CIA director, progressive James Thompson was frustrated that the DCCC put its resources to work only at the last minute. Thompson still came within seven points of flipping the district. Yet Thompson, who’s running again this year, isn’t featured on the DCCC’s list of “Red to Blue” candidates to support—those running in Republican-held districts ripe to turn.
For all this electioneering, the DCCC’s hit rate hasn’t been stellar. In 2016, its preferred candidates lost 23 districts that Hillary Clinton won.
A LONG TRADITION
What explains the DCCC’s allergy to progressives? Part of the story lies in its history.
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The 152-year-old organization has always been devoted to getting more Democrats elected, but its secondary mission has increasingly become the courting of wealth. As campaigns became more expensive with the advent of television, the DCCC began to alter its fundraising strategy from a single annual dinner to a year-round program with a full-time staff. In 1972, the Committee was used as a vehicle to funnel money to moderate Democrats from donors “opposing or cool” to George McGovern,as the Washington Post put it, but who didn’t want the donations to appear on their financial reports. These included BankPac (the American Bankers Association’s PAC) and the Mortgage Bankers PAC, among others.
Above: Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Calif.) embraces Rep. Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minn.) in 1989. As DCCC chair from 1981-1989, Coelho greased the way for lobbyists to access Democrats—for a price. (Photo by Laura Patterson/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
The DCCC’s first major scandal came not long after. Chair Ohio Rep. Wayne Hays was tasked in 1973 with leading campaign finance reform in the House, a “whopping conflict of interest,” as the Philadelphia Inquirer noted at the time. Hays was known to “donate” funds from the DCCC and elsewhere to Democratic friends, even when they faced no GOP challenger. As head of the House Administration Committee, he dragged his feet on campaign finance reform and fought off attempts to unseat him by, among other things, reminding freshmen Democrats about the campaign funds he controlled. Hays ultimately resigned in 1976 after a clerk alleged she had been hired to provide him sexual services on the taxpayers’ dime.
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The chair of the DCCC from 1981 to 1989 was Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Calif.),a fiscal conservative who endorsed the balanced budget constitutional amendment. Coelho raised mountains of cash by opening up the DCCC’s fundraising to defense contractors, oil producers, venture capitalists and other businesspeople that, as he put it, “the party kicked away in the 1970s.”Coelho resigned under an ethical cloud, but later served as an unpaid advisor to the Clinton administration, where he refused to publicly reveal his clients at his day job as an investment banker.
Under Coelho, hundreds of lobbyists and lawyers started attending the DCCC’s annual fundraising dinners. A brochure for Coelho’s “Speaker’s Club” promised members that, by donating thousands of dollars, they would be “assured courteous and direct access to” and “relaxed intimacy” with Democratic leaders and members of Congress. One anonymous liberal congressman complained to the Wall Street Journal, “Our butts are being peddled around town, a dollar at a time.”
In 1981, as representatives of the commodities industry embarked on a massive lobbying effort to prevent a clampdown on a tax avoidance scheme, Coelho told Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee that two of the industry reps were “friends of the Democratic Party, so don’t be too rough on them.”
Coelho eventually departed Congress, but the intertwining of Democratic politics and money interests never did. In 1991, Steven Soren, an Iowa Democrat, wrote in the Washington Post of his “appalling” experience as a congressional candidate, which, for him, embodied a worrying and “dramatic shift from participatory democracy to a highly centralized and manipulative system.”
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At DCCC workshops in 1990, he explained, wide-eyed candidates-to-be were imparted advice like: “Money drives this town” (DCCC staff member Marty Stone), “You have to sell yourself in Washington first” (consultant Tom King) and “Raising campaign money from Washington PACs is much easier than from individuals because it’s a business relationship” (Nebraska Rep. Peter Hoagland). At one of the workshops, Rep. Beryl Anthony (D-Ark.), a former head of the DCCC, told corporate PAC representatives that they would be able to pick winners in the room that would “make your board of directors proud.”
BIG MONEY
Twenty-eight years later, little has changed.While the DCCC has seen a “Trump bump” in the form of a record surge of small-dollar donations for the 2018 election cycle, its model is still stuck in big-donor mode. As The Intercept reported, the DCCC routinely requires its candidates to be able to raise at least $250,000 from the contacts in their phones, thereby leaning toward well-connected, wealthier candidates who tend to sit on the party’s right.
The DCCC’s funding structure incentivizes candidates who can cough up—or pull in—big sums. Much of the DCCC’s purse is filled by the dues Democratic House members pay every election cycle. A spreadsheet leaked to Buzzfeed in 2014 detailed some of these dues: $450,000 to $800,000 for House leadership and $200,000 to $500,000 for committee members and chief deputy whips. As a 2017 report from Issue One, an ethics watchdog group, put it, these dues act as “committee taxes,” forcing lawmakers to fundraise if they want to sit on or chair powerful committees, and making fundraising skills—not experience or knowledge—the most important qualification.
“Because of this pressure for fundraising, members have to spend a whole lot of time dialing for dollars rather than legislating,” says Eric Heberlig, professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
These dues, which the DCCC’s Senate counterpart doesn’t levy, were at first limited to top brass. Heberlig says this changed with the GOP’s first-in-40-years takeover of the House in 1994. “The party realized that if it got its incumbent members to chip in, they could take money from donors who had business before Congress and shift it to competitive districts.”
After legal limits were placed on “soft money” in 2002, the DCCC ratcheted dues up substantially. When Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson fell behind on his dues in 2004, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats warned him that he would be passed over for a ranking position on the House Agriculture Committee. He began raising increasing amounts from business PACs and large donors.
There’s also the influence of lobbyists. In 2017, the DCCC’s top five lobbying bundlers alone brought in more than $1.3 million. One was Nancy Zirkin of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a progressive group. The other four—Steven Elmendorf, Vincent Roberti, David Thomas and Tony Podesta—count or have counted among their clients a dizzying line-up of corporate giants, including just about every major pharmaceutical company you can think of: Pfizer, Amgen, Sigma, Novartis.
Three of these lobbyists—Podesta, Thomas and Elmendorf—have previously represented the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry lobbying group that fiercely fights attempts to lower drug prices.
Such fundraising comes with access. A document leaked by one of the suspected Russian hackers in 2016 showed lobbyists for Goldman Sachs and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association—whose PACs had donated to the DCCC—complaining to DCCC chair Ben Ray Luján about “messaging demonizing Wall Street” and the influence of Elizabeth Warren. Luján reassured them that Warren didn’t speak for the party.
Perhaps the influence of Big Pharma donors helps explain why a DCCC-commissioned report leaked in February discouraged House members from campaigning on Medicare for All—the policy that most distinguishes progressive challengers from the DCCC’s centrist picks.
MONEY OVER POWER
Sanders has expressed disgust at the DCCC’s recent efforts to stomp out progressive challengers. He told The Hill in March, “That just continues the process of debasing the democratic system in this country and is why so many people are disgusted with politics.” He called the organization’s attacks on Moser in Texas “appalling” and “unacceptable.”
At a critical time for the Democratic Party to start winning, the establishment appears content to follow the same blueprint that left the party in electoral shambles. Then again, challenging the status quo and advancing a progressive agenda have never been the business of the DCCC, so long as the money keeps flowing.
BRANKO MARCETIC is an editorial assistant at Jacobin magazine and a regular contributor to In These Times. He hails from Auckland, New Zealand.
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National Security
Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds
By
Karoun Demirjian and
Ellen Nakashima
August 18, 2020
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President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.
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In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.
It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated.
But the panel also concluded that the FBI’s handling of Russian threats to the election was “flawed” and that the bureau gave “unjustified credence” to allegations about Trump’s Russia ties made in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”
Document: Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election]
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-and-a-half year investigation stands as Congress’s only bipartisan examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The panel, significantly, agreed that the FBI overestimated Steel’s reliability and that Manafort and other aides exposed the campaign to undue Russian influence. But its leaders were noticeably divided along party lines in how they interpreted the report’s significance, and several committee members — including its acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — endorsed dissenting conclusions about Trump’s own culpability.
The partisan divisions are a sign that the panel’s tome likely will not put to rest the political wrangling over how seriously to treat foreign interference in U.S. democracy as the country heads into its most divisive election in modern history.
“After more than three years of investigation by this Committee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion,” a group of six panel Republicans, including Rubio, wrote in a statementinstead accusing the Democratic Party of coordinating with foreign actors to produce Steele’s dossier.
“In 2016, the Democratic Party, using a series of arm’s length transactions, hired a foreign citizen to seek out dirt on a political opponent, provided by foreign sources,” the Republicans wrote, attacking the FBI for “sloppy work and poor judgment.”
Five Democrat senators — including Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee — asserted the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump Campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.” Referring specifically to their findings on Manafort, the Democrats wrote, “This is what collusion looks like.”
The intelligence committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who did not sign onto the Democrats’ dissenting views, noted “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections,” and he encouraged “all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions.”
The committee’s past chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who oversaw the bulk of the investigation and also steered clear of the GOP’s dissent, struck a position in the middle.
“One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself,” he said in a statement. “Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections. The threat is ongoing.”
Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony
Burr and Warner launched the committee’s probe before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and sustained the bipartisan investigation over the following three and a half years, even as other Congressional investigations into the same matter faltered along partisan lines. Since the Senate Intelligence Committee began its probe, former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III also released a 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election — and Trump was impeached and acquitted after Democrats accused him of coercing Ukrainian leaders to interfere in the 2020 election.
Though the committee’s probe covers much of the same turf as Mueller’s investigation, it was different in nature. Mueller was running a criminal probe; the Senate committee was conducting an intelligence investigation — a distinction that helps to explain some of nuanced differences between their conclusions.
The Senate panel’s probe, which was mostly driven by the committee’s bipartisan staff, included more than 200 witnesses and considered evidence relating to Russian disinformation, Trump’s personal, business and campaign contacts with Russians and the transition period following the 2016 election.
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At one point, the document all but concludes that Trump aides were duped and manipulated by Russian interests they were too callow to understand.
“Russian officials, intelligence services, and others” acting in concert with the Kremlin “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report concluded. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”
The report also presents a damning portrait of the Trump campaign’s hasty move in March 2016 to assemble a foreign policy team, asserting that it had recruited inexperienced people without thoroughly vetting them and thus potentially exposed itself to Russian influence.
“Ultimately,” the committee wrote, “the foreign policy team exposed the Trump Campaign to significant counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”
The committee pointed to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who attempted to secure a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin through “highly suspicious” contacts with people close to the Russian government. Ultimately, investigators concluded, Papadopoulos “was not a witting co-optee of the Russian the Russian intelligence services. The panel also found that while Russia seemed to show an interest in campaign adviser Carter Page, investigators “found no indication that Page had useful Campaign information for the Russian intelligence services to extract, nor meaningful influence for them to exploit.”
The committee did find however that Putin personally directed the 2016 hack-and-leak campaign targeting the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton campaign. The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks “actively sought and played a key role in the Russian campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort,” the report stated, surmising that a Russian military spy agency, known as the GRU, transferred hacked emails to WikiLeaks likely because it offered a more effective platform for publicity than the GRU’s own methods.
Yet investigators could not “reliably determine the extent of authentic, nonpublic knowledge” Trump’s friend Roger Stone had about WikiLeaks’s coming releases and shared with the campaign.
The panel noted that its investigation was hampered by several witnesses’ refusing interviews and to produce documents, citing Fifth Amendment rights that protect against self incrimination. These included Stone, Manafort and Rick Gates, the campaign’s deputy chair at that time. The panel’s request to interview Julian Assange was rebuffed.
The committee also outright accused Blackwater founder and Trump supporter Erik Prince of stonewalling its investigation, saying that it was “hampered by a lack of cooperation” and that his account of a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles alongside a Russian official was “brief and deceptive.”
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}:
The committee previously released other volumes detailing aspects of its inquiry. Those reports focused on U.S. election security, Russia’s use of social media in disinformation campaigns, the Obama administration’s response to the perceived threat in 2016 and the intelligence community’s joint assessment that Russia had interfered in an attempt to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.
Yet the panel’s effort to maintain a bipartisan approach has not saved it from partisan scrutiny. Last year, the panel came under fire from Senate Republicans after issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. to come in for a second round of testimony.
After his testimony, Trump Jr. was one of several witnesses that the panel referred to the Justice Department for closer scrutiny over discrepancies between their testimony and that of Gates, the ex-deputy campaign chair who was a key witness in Mueller’s probe.
:{
}:
Earlier this year, Burr stepped aside as panel chairman after coming under scrutiny over stocks he sold in industries hit badly by the coronavirus pandemic. Rubio has been serving as acting chairman in his place.
===
==
120
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/are-tom-perez-and-the-dnc-preparing-for-a-battle-against-bernie-sanders-and-the-progressive-movement/
==
https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/the-dnc-confederacy-of-dunces-is-back-at-it-for-2020-and-the-consequences-could-devastate-the-us-and-the-world/
true dat
DNC confederacy of dunces is back at it for 2020 — and the consequences could devastate the US and the world
Written by John Atcheson / Common Dreams August 8, 2019
The Democratic debates turned into exactly what they should have — a war between the progressives and the neoliberal centrists (aka corporatists).
Guess which side the corporate media, the pundits, the think tanks, foundations, the DNC, and the rest of the Democratic establishment is lining up behind?
You got it. The corporatists. Not surprising when you consider most of the mainstream media is owned by corporations, and corporations fund the rest of the neoliberal institutions supporting the party.
These are the same folks who, back 2016, assured us Hillary would win and that Trump couldn’t. Undaunted by their complete failure to predict Trump’s victory and undaunted by the fact that they have no satisfactory explanation for why they were so wrong, they’re busy dispensing advice and issuing dire warnings against progressivism once again.
The problem is, their advice is likely to result in the same outcome as it did in 2016—a Trump victory.
...
Or consider the Green New Deal (GND). In the face of a climate crisis that is literally an existential threat, the GND calls for laying out a blueprint designed to tackle climate change in a way that makes it an economic opportunity, not an economic burden. Yes, it calls for some fundamental restructuring of our economy, but that’s exactly what’s needed to avoid an ecological Armageddon. And that’s not hyperbole—that’s the scientifically accurate description of the path the “realists” want us to stay on. To the extent the realists have a climate policy, it amounts to trying to jump the Grand Canyon in ten-foot increments. Yeah, that’s “practical.”
So why are centrist Democrats ridiculing the GND? Again, the answer is simple—they are reluctant to take on the fossil fuel industry. In fact, the DNC overturneda party policy not to take campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies. Turns out, it’s more “practical” to keep the corporate spigots open that it is to protect our life support systems.
Or consider trade. While the corporate centrists would like to continue with the business-first strategy that has allowed corporations to export jobs and capital in order to avoid taxes, pay lower wages, avoid environmental laws, and do an end run around worker safety, food safety and product safety laws, progressives are advocating trade agreements that force corporations to consider those things. This would mean fewer jobs going overseas, higher tax revenues, and better lives for both domestic and international workers.
...
===
https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/voters-candidates-and-activists-all-want-a-democratic-debate-on-climate-why-are-tom-perez-and-the-dnc-refusing/
===
==
aha, why so many fewer dems than gop? tho tony coelho got dems in game:
grimm bk
we have ppl --> AOC
https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-june-17-2019/
1976 carter kinda central, fix rep by post-prez
1978 newt g shellacking, longtime senators, lions like frank church, birch bayh
roger stone et al tactics, 1976 scotus camp fin reform [buckely valeo?], political consultant, pol ops, oppo, 30 sec ads TV, corp $ (TV and corp money // rose as factors together: we have opposite now, TV decline coupled with online small $ raising?))
dccc a backwater, tony c goes to corps and sez we have house 40 yrs (still have dixiecrats) so you need to fund us; win big in 1982? said to be b/c of Reagan recession, but grimm sez dem $ ctr; then dems pick Mondale, defiicit hawk, but was painted as liberal, landslide loss; dens say oh liberal is loser, so leads to clinton triangulation?
pelosi endorse by widow, beat DSA britt pro gay cand (so when she says i understand the SF left, she means i have beaten them); she thinks usa basically conservative in RR era, so she stuill fears backlash cf clinton impeachment.
==
:{ demand for 2020 Presidential Climate Debate Escalates after DNC Says No}: BY: MARIANNE LAVELLE 15 candidates, young activists and Miami’s Democratic Party are now pressuring the DNC to devote an entire debate to climate change policy. |
==
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-campaign-training-school/
Lead ORGANIZERS FROM Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 campaign are taking on the consultant class with a new initiative to train the next generation of progressive organizers and staffers. Movement School, a 10-week professional development program launched by Organize for Justice, the sister organization of Justice Democrats, is teaching fellows how to work as campaign managers, communications directors, and field directors.
The Campaign Fellows program is meant to create a pathway for young activists from working-class backgrounds to enter official campaign roles and to preserve the lessons grassroots campaigns have learned throughout the years by passing them down to future staffers — all while setting up an alternative political infrastructure that operates outside of the Democratic Party.
Ironically, the progressive movement’s work to build its own political infrastructure may have been inadvertently accelerated by a policy designed to suppress the party’s insurgent wing. In March, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced a new policy to blacklist any firms working for primary challengers, effectively protecting the party’s white, male incumbents in safe blue seats.
As a result of the DCCC blacklist, several consultantsdropped the primary campaign of Marie Newman, the pro-abortion rights progressive who has launched a second challenge to Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the few anti-abortion Democrats in the House. Despite the blacklist, organizations like EMILY’s List, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, have still rallied behind Newman’s challenge. A Movement School participant even went on to work for Newman after the trainings....
==
"I'd like to see a majority of women in Congress,…
rootsaction autopsy, corp sellots (see 3rd way?)
As Donald Trump enters his tenth month in office, public opinion polls find he is the most unpopular president at this stage in his term than any other occupant of the Oval Office in modern American history. His actions at home and abroad have alarmed Democrats, Republicans and independents. Apart from recent indictments by the independent counsel investigating charges of collusion between the Trump’s campaign and Russia, the president is seen to have triggered an number of ugly spats with Gold Star family members, NFL players, and the mayor of San Juan, Puerto, exacerbated tensions with North Korea and praised white supremacists as “very fine people.”
But as many U.S. voters remember the shock and dread they felt on election day 2016, when Donald Trump unexpectedly won the presidency, there are growing concerns that the Democratic party has failed to learn the lessons of last year’s election defeat.The Democratic National Committee chose not to do a public “autopsy,” examining the reasons their party no longer has control of any branch of the federal government, only holds 16 of 50 governorships, and has lost 1,000 state legislative seats since 2009.
Filing this void, a group of activists with the nonprofit Action for a Progressive Future, wrote a 34-page report titled, “Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis”The report focuses on some key factors that have contributed to the Democrats' recent string of defeats, including low voter turnout among the party’s base. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Pia Gallegos, a longtime civil-rights lawyer and New Mexico activist, who was one of the team of four authors of the Autopsy. Here, shesummarizes the report’s conclusions and recommendations.
PIA GALLEGOS: The Democratic party itself did not do a self-analysis or a critique regarding its failures of how and why it lost the presidential election in 2016. Oftentimes, a party does that when it loses a major election. It didn't do that, and if it did, it didn't publicize it. And so, a group of us took it upon ourselves under the leadership of Norman Solomon to do this report. And so, we looked various factors that failed within the Democratic party. We looked atcorporate powerand the party and we looked at race, and we looked the youth vote, and we looked at social movements and we looked at democracy – or the failure of democracy – within the party, and war and the party.
And we divided the report into sections like that and showed how the Democratic party has continuously, in all of these areas, failed to address the concerns of its constituencies.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Maybe you could talk a little bit about what you see in terms of the leadership of the Democratic party right now, following the election defeat.
PIA GALLEGOS: Right. I'm sorry to say that there's really two wings to the Democratic party and we see this even with the head of Democratic party right now, Tom Perez who's head of the DNC. And he's just acted recently to purge the DNC of some of the most progressive members of the DNC––because he's allowed to appoint people and to depose people from the post. And so he's brought in a whole bunch of political operatives and lobbyists – corporate lobbyists – as members of the DNC who will have superdelegate status, which means that they will be able to vote for a presidential candidate without regard to the pledged delegates that are required on every state level through the Electoral College. ...
===
"CLEAN" MONEY --> 8/14/18 change rule to take fossil fuel $!?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dnc-ban-fossil-fuel-donations_us_5b20116ae4b09d7a3d77d094
---
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dnc-fossil-fuel-donations_us_5b6dddd4e4b0530743c9ca67
Democratic National Committee passed a resolution Friday afternoon that activists say effectively reverses a ban on fossil fuel company donations.
The resolution introduced by DNC Chair Tom Perez states that the party “support[s] fossil fuel workers” and will accept donations from “employers’ political action committees.”It was approved by a 30-2 vote just two months after the committee adopted another resolution prohibiting donations from fossil fuel companies by a unanimous vote.
The new resolution nods to “forward-looking employers” that are “powering America’s all-of-the-above energy economy and moving us towards a future fueled by clean and low-emissions energy technology, from renewables to carbon capture and storage to advanced nuclear technology.”
“I am furious that the DNC would effectively undo a resolution passed just two months ago just as the movement to ban fossil fuel corporate PAC money is growing (and Democrats are winning),” said R.L. Miller, president of the super PAC Climate Hawks Vote, who co-sponsored the original resolution.
DNC spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said in an email that the new resolution was “not a reversal,” noting in a statement after the vote that “any review of our current donations reflects” the Democrats’ “commitment” to turn away the fossil fuel industry. The DNC has not accepted any fossil fuel donations since adopting the ban.
The key difference could be if the new resolution applies only to campaigns ― in which case, it may not annul the original resolution but would “repudiate the spirit” of the earlier one, according to Jerald Lentini, deputy director of the Democratic fundraising group It Starts Today.
“Smart Democrats are very good at splitting hairs and nitpicking,” Miller said. “It’s trying to manufacture distinctions out of whole cloth.”
Party activists ― including Christine Pelosi, the main author of the first resolution and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter― hoped the DNC would consider a second proposal this month to stop accepting contributions over $200 from individuals who work for the fossil fuel industry. That, the thinking went, would limit the influence of high-paid executives while remaining open to the working class that Democrats aim to champion. The original resolution, which Perez voted for in June, barred the DNC from accepting contributions from corporate PACs tied to oil, gas and coal companies. But it allowed for the DNC to continue accepting individual donations from workers in those industries.
Instead, the party appears to be backtracking.
The DNC’s new resolution “reaffirms its unwavering and unconditional commitment to the workers, unions and forward-looking employers that power the American economy,” according to the text.
As such, it states that the DNC “will continue to welcome the longstanding and generous contributions of workers, including those in energy and related industries, who organize and donate to Democratic candidates individually or through their unions’ or employers’ political action committees.”
The resolution, proposed as historic wildfires are scorching California, makes no mention of climate change.
Hinojosa said the resolution came in response to “concerns from Labor” that the original fossil fuel donations ban “was an attack on workers.” Just 4.4 percent of workers in the mining sector ― including coal, oil and gas ― are union members, according to the Union Membership and Coverage Database. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, however, remains a strong supporter of building pipelines and donated more than $305,000 to the DNC this year.
:{ > :(style="display:inline-block"):}:
To put a fine point on it: This proposal isn't to let union members keep donating to the DNC. It's to let fossil fuel executives keep donating and selling influence among Democrats. Certain unions (incl some building trades) see their interests as aligned with those of executives
- :{340:(style="display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;margin-left:3px;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;min-width:0px"):}:
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The strength of the fossil fuel donations ban seemed in question almost immediately after it passed. The DNC refused to announce the resolution, declining to comment to HuffPost for a story that made the vote public. At the Texas Democratic Party’s convention two weeks later, a state party official opposed a state-level proposal to ban fossil fuel donations and oppose new gas extraction, arguing that the DNC’s own resolution was not set in stone.
A.J. Durrani, a retired engineer and manager at the oil giant Shell who recently joined the national party committee, said the DNC did not include the earlier vote in the minutes from its last executive committee meeting.
“There was no mention in it,” Durrani said by phone in June. As far as he was concerned, he said, “As of right now, the DNC has not voted.”
Durrani did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Texas Democrats ultimately voted down their proposed resolution.
In February 2017, DNC rank-and-file rejected another Pelosi resolution to forbid “registered, federal corporate lobbyists” from serving as “DNC chair-appointed, at-large members” and to reinstate former President Barack Obama’s ban on corporate PAC donations.
Obama halted contributions from PACs and lobbyists in 2008 after winning the party’s presidential nomination. But then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz loosened the restrictions in July 2015 before completely rolling back the ban in February 2016, nine months before that year’s presidential election.
The energy and natural resource sectors, includingfossil fuel producers and mining companies, gave $2.6 million to the DNC in 2016, according to data collected by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That’s less than 5 percent of the $56.1 million that the finance and real estate sectors ― the DNC’s largest corporate donors ― contributed that year.
Oil and gas companies spent a record $7.6 million on Democratic races in 2016. That’s a pittance compared to the $53.7 million in direct donations to Republicans, who received 88 percent of the industry’s contributions during that election cycle. Republicans have taken in 89 percent of the industry’s donations so far in 2018. That figure rises to 95 percent of the coal sector’s largessethis year.
But even as fossil fuel companies entrench with Republicans and the Trump administration continues deregulating drilling, mining and emissions, Democrats remain slow to mount a serious challenge to the industry most responsible for anthropogenic global warming.
On the state level, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) failed to pass the nation’s first carbon tax even as his party enjoys complete control over the deep-blue state. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has refused to swear off fossil fuel donations, halt new fracked gas infrastructure in the state, or support a widely hailed climate bill despite an aggressive primary challenge from progressive Cynthia Nixon and intense pressure from environmentalists.
On the national level, most bills from Democrats who purport to be Congress’ biggest climate hawks amount to half measures, either exempting major polluters such as the meat industry, directing carbon tax revenues that could be used to mitigate the effects of climate change to lowering taxes, or waiting until 2050 to end fossil fuel use.
There are some bright spots. Last September, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) introduced the Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act ― considered one of the most progressive climate bills yet proposed ― which calls for ending oil, gas and coal use by 2035, cutting all subsidies to drilling, mining and refining companies, and funding programs to help workers transition into new industries.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the likely next representative for New York’s 14th Congressional District, has vowed to push for a “Green New Deal,” a federal plan to spur “the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of millions of high-wage jobs.” Other progressive candidates are now rallying around the Green New Deal concept and calling for nascent proposals for a jobs guarantee program to be married to renewable energy targets.That, proponents say, may be the key to wooing unions away from supporting lucrative fossil fuel projects.
--
dccc~ dana r
https://www.eenews.net/special_reports/campaign_2018/stories/1060082057
==
https://www.alternet.org/democratic-moderates-fear-socialist-left-will-wreck-party-they-want-keep-gig
==
1/2017?
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/democratic-party-campaign-fundraising-wasserman-schultz
moody (Kim Moody is a co-founder of Labor Notes. He is the author of numerous books about the American labor movement, including :{On New Terrain: How Capital Is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War}:.)
Reforming, realigning, or refashioning the Democratic Party into a vehicle for social democracy is one of the oldest, oft-repeated, and frustratingly unsuccessful strategies of the US left.
The Populists tried it in the 1890s, only to be absorbed and disarmed. The new industrial unions of the CIO attempted it beginning in 1936, just as the New Deal began to retreat. The Democratic Socialists, led by Michael Harrington, pursued the realignment strategy in the 1970s at the very moment the “party of the people” began its trek to the neoliberal right. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition launched two highly visible runs for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s even as Democratic National Committee (DNC) chief Charles Manatt recruited big business and its money. Then came Bill Clinton.
Could it be different this time around?
The hope that the Democratic Party can be pushed substantially to the left has been given new life by two wholly unexpected political events: Bernie Sanders’ spectacular showing in the Democratic presidential primaries, and Donald Trumps’ terrifying election as president. Hope, on the one hand, and fear, on the other, have sent a new wave of activists toward or into the Democratic Party.
Several decades ago, realigners argued that the Democratic Party wasn’t really a party at all — just a loose coalition of disparate elements.
At the time, the institutional basis of the Democratic Party was the alliance of northern urban machines and southern (Dixiecrat) courthouse gangs, with organized labor as a junior partner. By the 1970s, however, the city machines were mostly dead or dying; the Dixiecrats were beginning their exit; and labor, Northern liberals, and the rising African-American vote seemed to provide the foundation for US social democracy.
The would-be realigners had other things going for them: party organization was weak; state parties were part-time and populated with amateurs; straight-ticket voting had fallen from 74 percent in 1952 to 50 percent by the mid-1960s; discipline in congressional votes had slumped from 70 percent of major floor votes in both houses during the 1950s to 58 percent of votes in the House and 51 percent in the Senate by the early 1970s; and after 1968 party leadership fell to a less than impressive cadre.
Yet this seemingly feeble party repelled the would-be reformers. And today, due to large-scale changes over the past few decades, the Democratic Party appears even more impregnable.
The party has become a well-funded, professionalized, multitiered hierarchy capable of intervening in elections at just about every level. It selects candidates, provides funding, furnishes endorsements, offers media relations, and supplies computer and digital campaign and get-out-the-vote services. In Congress and most state legislatures, its leaders impose a high level of party discipline, such that for the last two decades 90 percent of floor votes in both houses have been along strict party lines.
The party structure and establishment has been fortified against its rivals, external and internal.
The Transformation Process
Since the 1970s, the most visible change in both major parties, and in the political process itself, is the explosion of money at every level of party operations and elections.
Underlying this change has been the dramatic rise in economic inequality, which has made the rich far richer. As Thomas Piketty notes in his monumental study of inequality: “The upper decile’s share increased from 30–35 percent of national income in the 1970s to 45–50 percent in the 2000s.” The top 1 percent gobbled up about 40 percent of that.
Corporations have also seen their pockets swell. Despite falling profit rates at times and recurring crises, corporate profits leapt from $788 billion in 2002 to $2.1 trillion in 2015.
Wealth naturally followed the same course. Saez and Zucman calculate that the 1 percent now own 42 percent of national wealth, the equivalent of $35 trillion. The top 0.1 percent hold 22 percent of the county’s wealth, up from 7 percent in 1978. Beginning in the 1980s, and accelerating in the 1990s, the largest corporate merger movement in US history consolidated capital in industry after industry and pushed profits higher, despite crisis after crisis.
Flush with cash, business interests and the wealthy bid up the cost of elections to new heights and commericalized the way elections are run — at all levels of governments.
The total cost of the 1980 presidential election was $161 million.By 2012 it had grown to $2.6 billion, and in 2016 it ballooned to at least $6.9 billion. For the House of Representatives, corporate and trade association PAC spending soared from $40 million in the 1981–82 election cycle to $298 million in 2013–14.As state legislatures professionalized — most became full-time institutions beginning in the 1970s — the cost of elections rose to $1 billion in 2000 and then to $2.2 billion in 2014. The tab for state and federal, non-presidential offices stood at nearly $4 billion as of 2014 and will certainly climb higher as the two major parties attempt to beat one another by throwing more and more money at elections.
Huge amounts of money also go into local elections. In New York, real estate interests poured $6 million in “outside” money into the 2013 Democratic primaries, according to the city’s campaign finance board. In Chicago’s 2015 city council (aldermanic) races, the Illinois Public Interest Research Group reports that the “money primary” determined who would win the actual primary 93 percent of the time. Incumbents outraised and outspent challengers five to one.
Behind much of the soaring costs of running for office has been the turn away from old-fashioned party-run or union door-to-door canvassing to purchased forms of campaigning and get-out-the-vote efforts. Paid consultants, mass mailings, pollsters, computer experts, media gurus, and services from profit-making outfits specializing in campaign wizardry have replaced the old clubhouse (or reform club), union, or county foot soldiers. In the 2014 midterm, the cost of the TV “air war” for congressional elections hit $814 million, the highest ever.
The most recent innovation in commercialized politics is profit-making outfits that providedigital voter targeting. Companies like Aristotle and DSPolitical gather as much as five hundred pieces of information on individuals and then determine who is most likely to vote — setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the more well-off are more likely to be targeted. (Seventy-five percent of those voting in congressional elections have family incomes exceeding $50,000 a year, and 57 percent earn $75,000 or more.) Spending on these firms’ services jumped from $22 million in the 2008 presidential election to about $1 billion in 2016. And according to DSPolitical, these services are now being used in state and local elections as well.
As election costs have skyrocketed, members of Congress have become richer than ever. In 1984 the median net worth of US representatives was $280,000. By 2014 it had surpassed $1 million, with Democrats slightly ahead of Republicans. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, for example, reported a net worth of just over $29 million in 2013, and the average net worth of a Democratic representative was $5,700,000. Many congressional Democrats are full-fledged members of the 1 percent.
In short, both the Democratic Party’s electorate and elected officials are increasingly skewed toward the rich.
Party-Building
While contemporary election campaigns are often assumed to be “candidate-centered,” a recent study by the Congressional Quarterlynotes, “Congressional aspirants… quickly encounter national networks of party committees and their allied interest groups. At the heart of these networks are the two major parties’ House and Senate campaign committees, now active in nearly all phases of congressional elections.”
In recent decades, the three major committees that form the core of the national party have taken a greater role in elections, funneling money raised from businesses to campaigns and state parties (on top of what business PACs give directly to campaigns).
The DNC, for instance, spent a mere $14.8 million on campaigns in 1980. By 2012 it was contributing $292.3 million to Democratic candidates. Similarly, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) saw its campaign contributions rise from $2 million in 1980 to $206 million in 2014, while those of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) climbed from $1.6 million to $169.2 million over the same period — both increasing by one hundred times in nominal terms or about thirty-six times in real money. State parties have developed their own prodigious funding operations, throwing in an additional $182.6 million for congressional elections in 2014.
So where does all this money come from?
Big business, on the whole. Among the DNC’s biggest funders in 2016 were Microsoft, Pritzker, Time Warner, the private equity giant Blackstone Group, and several investment firms, such as the$65 billion Renaissance Technologies (which gave $881,450 last year). Of the $98.9 million the DNC had raised as of last August, $50 million came from business, $7.1 million from lawyers and lobbyists, $1.6 million from ideological or issue groups, a mere $66,500 from labor, and the rest from individuals.
The DCCC and DSCC also draw heavily from business and lightly from labor. For the 2016 cycle, of the $55.6 million the DCCC had raised as of August, $22.2 million came from business, $3.8 million from lawyers and lobbyists, $2.9 million from ideological or issue groups, and just $175,000 from labor. In the off-year cycle of 2014, business lavished the DCCC with $31.3 million compared to labor’s $1.2 million. Of the $41.3 million the Senate Campaign Committee had amassed as of August 2016, $17.5 million was from business, $869,300 from ideological and issue committees, and $117,900 from labor; in the 2014 cycle, business donated $26.5 million compared to labor’s $910,600.
Individual wealthy donors are another important source of cash for these committees. SourceWatch reports that in 2010, the DSCC compared its two-hundred-thousand-person donor list to a database of the nation’s richest 5 percent and discovered that a quarter of the names matched.
Meanwhile, digital crowdfunding by outfits like ActBlue, alleged to democratize funding by bundling small credit card contributions, have just flooded the election process with more money — ironically amplifying the rush of Super PAC money that the Supreme Court’s Citizens Uniteddecision released.
The most recent success in crowdfunding is also less suggestive than it might appear. On its face, Bernie Sanders’ remarkable presidential bid seemed to show how small-donor money could be harnessed to elect leftist candidates. But Sanders’ bid for the Democratic nomination run was a, almost the, high-profile event of the first half of 2016. Most local, state, and even congressional primaries are markedly different, characterized by very low turnout and scant media coverage. In these races — the overwhelming majority — crowdfunding is likely to be less effective.
In any case, mainstream and incumbent Democrats already use outfits like ActBlue to pump up their political coffers even beyond the business and PAC money they get. And engaging in the electoral funding arms race is bound to tie up resources and, in the end, prove self-defeating. Playing the money game rather than pursuing low-cost grassroots, face-to-face organizing to increase turnout and inject actual political issues into the debate is a huge misuse of activists’ time and energy.
Political participation by credit card isn’t the antidote to “free speech” by checkbook. It’s just another big bid in the auction, pushing the cost of elections higher and deepening the process of commercialization through unaccountable service providers.
All of this adds up to a party that, even more than in the past, is both highly undemocratic and structurally tied to the business PACs and wealthy donors that fund their committees and preferred candidates. As the commercialization of campaigns gallops along, rank-and-file Democrats have less and less say in the party.
The Permeable Party?
The most permeable feature of the two major parties is the primary. Yet it’s a small opening: much of the money swirling around ends up in these contests, above all to give current officeholders a leg up. In each election cycle since World War II, only between 1 and 2 percent of congressional incumbents have lost a primary challenge, with the rate of incumbency hovering above 90 percent.
The 90 percent–plus ratio holds for state and local offices as well. In general, because they are already well-known, incumbents at all levels are able to gain important endorsements, union backing, and support from party activists; attract what media attention there is; and raise several times what most challengers can muster.
For those looking to get involved in the party at the local level to elect a left challenger, there’s an additional stumbling block: after the primary contest, party activists are expected to work for the winner — who, more often than not, is the incumbent they just tried to defeat. This expectation that party activists work for the entire ticket reinforces the status quo. The norms of the party militate against any effort to transform the Democrats by sweeping local, state, and congressional primaries, starting from the ground up.....
==
DNC to reject fossil fuel company donations | TheHill
thehill.com/policy/energy.../391933-dnc-to-reject-fossil-fuel-company-donations
1.
Missing: takeover | Must include: takeover
DNC Members Vote Down Corporate Money Ban | HuffPost
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/.../dnc-pac-contributions-ban_us_58b1ac9ee4b0a8a9...
1.
Missing: takeover | Must include: takeover
==
B. The Democrats’ Response: Mixing Business with Politics
The disparities between the Republican and Democratic Parties’ respective
fund-raising capabilities began to change when Tony Coelho, a little-known
congressman from California, became head of the DCCC in 1981.38 Over the
course of the previous decade, the political power of business and labor had
grown dramatically.39 Recognizing this growth, as well as the fund-raising gap
between the parties, Coelho set out to turn the DCCC into an effective fundraising
business, modeled after its Republican counterpart.40
He did so as the growth of PACs accelerated, both in number and influence,
reflecting a backlash against the political victories of consumer and
environmental interests in the 1970s.41 Although PACs had been around since
1944, their growth took off after the Nixon administration.42 Capitalizing on
Democratic control of the House in 1981, Coelho targeted PAC managers and
ruthlessly traded political access for cash.43 During his first year as chairman,
Coelho started the Speaker’s Club, a group that received audiences with
members—including House Speaker Tip O’Neill and other influential
Democrats—in exchange for a $5,000 membership fee.44 Despite Coelho’s
efforts and the fact that PACs typically give to incumbents, business PAC
money began to increasingly flow toward Republican candidates when it
appeared as though the Republican Party might regain control of the House in
1982.45
Instead in the 1982 elections, the economy soured and Republicans lost
twenty-six seats in the House.46 When the Democrats retained, and actually
increased, their majority in the House, Coelho stepped up his efforts to reclaim
business donations by convincing business and labor PAC leaders that
supporting incumbency yielded better political returns than supporting
candidates based on ideology.47 An emboldened Coelho “stressed over and
over” to business PACs that “Democrats retained a commanding majority in
the House and that the committees important to business continued to be
headed by Democrats.”48
His aggressive tactics in wooing business PACs away from the Republican
Party were compared to a Tammany Hall-style shakedown.49 As one account
relates:
Coelho set up candidate forums at which PAC directors could
look over the party’s prospects. Lobbyists and candidates all milled
around in a big room wearing name tags . . . .
Coelho didn’t rely wholly on the supposed business credentials of
his candidates, however. He announced he would record names of
those who didn’t support candidates he deemed worthy. It was as
though a traffic cop were stopping cars to sell tickets to the policeunion
ball.50
By 1983, just two years after Coelho was appointed DCCC chairman, the
Committee tripled its fund-raising from $2 million to $6 million.51 The
sources of the funds were highly concentrated:
Coelho liked to boast that half his money came through the mail,
from small donations with no strings attached. In gross terms, that
was true. But [finance director Terry] McAuliffe’s numbers show...
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http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/09/and-the-good-times-rolled-17-donors-gave-three-quarters-of-dems-convention-money/
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In comparison, the Republicans raised $65.7 million, or about $4 million less than the Democrats — quite a turnaround from the 2012 season, when the Dems struggled to fund their celebration. Nineteen donors gave at least $1 million each. The GOP’s Cleveland 2016 host committee spent about $49.8 million, while the Philadelphia committee spent almost all of its funds, or $73.4 million.
The Democrats owe $6.3 million in loans to entities such as PIDC-LOCAL Development Corporation ($3 million) and Hargrove, Inc (2.4 million). The conservative convention owes about $1 million.
Several companies made large contributions to both conventions: AT&T topped both lists with $4.3 million in in-kind donations to the Republicans and $1.5 million to the Democrats; Microsoft’s gifts came to $1.8 million for Cleveland and $650,000 for Philly. Facebook gave $1.4 million to the Democrats, $400,000 more than to the Republicans. Google, Xerox and Twitter gave evenly to both sides.
Many big contributions unsurprisingly flowed in from unions, with at least 11 labor groups giving $250,000 or more. The biggest checks came from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers ($2.2 million), the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers ($1.4 million) and the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters ($800,000).Labor leans left: So far, 85 percent of union campaign donations to candidates and parties, or $39 million, have gone to Democrats this election cycle.
As with the Republicans, only one individual Democratic donor gave a seven-figure check: $1.25 million came from billionaire J.B. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune and cofounder of the private equity firm, The Pritzker Group. His sister, Penny Pritzker, is the current Secretary of Commerce, and founder of PSP Capital Partners and Pritzker Realty Group. (The Republicans grabbed $1.5 million from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson a month after the festivities.)
Other generous donors included media entrepreneur H. F. “Gerry” Lenfest with $500,000, SlimFast founder S. Daniel Abraham with $350,000 and Michael J Sacks, CEO of Grosvenor Capital Management, with $300,000. Former Pennsylvania state senator Constance H. Williams pitched in $300,000, renowned gardener Amy Goldman-Fowler giving $250,000, philanthropist Marsha Laufer gave $250,000 and Alexander Soros, son of business magnate George Soros, chipped in $200,000.
Large checks came from groups based in the City of Brotherly Love: the PIDC-LOCAL Development Corporation, a nonprofit founded by the City of Philadelphia and Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, gave $5 million, while the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau chipped in $4.5 million. Back in July, the IRS turned down the host committee’s request for tax-exempt status, which had been granted to previous host committees as well as this year’s Republican one. To work around the denial, donors instead could give to the Convention & Visitors Bureau and claim tax deductions, and the bureau passed the money along.
The City of Philadelphia’s gift of $8.6 million was actually federal funding from the Department of Justice for security measures, according to the mayor’s office. In total, $43 million, or almost 60 percent, came from the state of Pennsylvania alone.
Other, more purely political organizations also jumped into the ring: The Democratic Governors Association contributed $2 million, while Priorities USA, the main super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton, gave $1.5 million. The group has spent more than $92 million this cycle to boost the Democratic nominee for president, including thehost committee donation.
A handful of big names that contributed to the Charlotte convention four years agodidn’t bring out their checkbooks this year, like Fred Eychaner,CEO of Newsweb Corp; he gave $500,000 in 2012 through his charitable fund, as well as a $100,000 personal donation. Democrats can hardly complain about Eychaner being stingy, though, given his $16 million in contributions to their campaigns and groups this cycle.
The last convention also took in $500,000 from former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer. But he, too, has spent heavily in 2016 — he’s the top megadonor and, with his wife Kathryn, has donated almost $40 million to boost Democratic candidates. Others who vanished from this year’s donors’ list: real estate guru Constance Milstein, who gave $300,000 for Charlotte, and James Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, a North Carolina-based corporation; he gave $340,000 personally to the Charlotte host committee and his company made almost $10 million in in-kind contributions.
The Philly host committee raised more than twice as much as the one organized for the 2012 convention in Charlotte, which brought in about $35 million, including a $10 million loan. But the Charlotte committee was hamstrung when the Dems initially nixed corporate contributions. When individual contributions lagged, the Democrats went back on their word and created a second committee, New American City, to grab an additional $20 million, mostly from corporations. Bank of America, Duke Energy and Dreamworks were among the largest contributors to the second entity.
Obama’s first nominating convention in Denver 2008 secured almost $61 million in funds.
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