Dems smoking cigars and riding the gravy train

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 7:04am

Dead but not yet buried. The Dimocraptic party is like a three-legged bulldog. Tenacious bite but won't get very far. I am happy to report that Florida leads the nation due to my cousins' great appetites. Seems like them Dems got hold of a bone and can't let go. Mmm, meaty. The party of the people? Which people? The party for the people--not our people. The party of the working person? If you consider owning hedge funds and multinational corporations working, then yes, working people.

Hillary blazed a new trail, leading to the edge of a tall cliff, by picking and packing the DNC like a tin of sardines (and IQ equivalence to same). Why bother with a messy, noisy, unruly election where your candidate might lose? No need. The Dims have a program for that. It's called pressuring progressive participation to depart. "Don't enter that race, buddy, if you are fond of your family". No, this quasi-intimidating posture deters progressives and other unbelievers from entering politics--and it's not very subtle.

The next two links relate to just one congressional district, but is relevant to many more.

Steny Hoyer, stogie-smoking stooge for Dim leaders has this thing all mapped out. Concerning a congressional race in the Denver-Aurora CO district, he made his feelings known with little finesse about who should be the candidate, in other words, screw the primary.

STENY HOYER, the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, has for years been a prolific campaigner on behalf of current and potential members of Congress. It was no surprise, then, that December found him in Colorado, where the party has hopes of knocking off Republican incumbent Mike Coffman.

Before Donald Trump had even been inaugurated, local resistance groups began deluging Coffman’s public appearances, pressing him not to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and putting him back on his political heels. Levi Tillemann, an author, inventor, and former official with the Obama administration’s Energy Department, moved back home to make a run against Coffman.

He focused his campaign on clean elections, combatting climate change, “Medicare for All,” free community college, and confronting economic inequality and monopoly power. Another candidate for the nomination, Jason Crow, a corporate lawyer at the powerhouse Colorado firm Holland & Hart and an Army veteran, meanwhile, appeared to have the backing of the Democratic establishment, though it wasn’t explicit. In November, it became clearer, as Crow was named by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to the party’s “Red to Blue” list, which the committee specifies is not an endorsement but does carry symbolic weight.

Regressive Hoyer and progressive Tillemann met in downtown Denver to talk about the upcoming 6th congressional district primary race. The gist of it is: "there ain't gonna be no race, boy. Now pack your bags and get in line".

During the conversation, Hoyer asked Tillemann to leave the race multiple times and make way for Crow. “You keep saying I would like you to get out of the race, and of course that’s correct,” Hoyer said, adding that he hoped Tillemann would refrain from criticizing the party’s chosen candidate if he decided to stay in.

You can read about Tillemann's background in this article. You can also read about other progressive hopefuls getting the "you don't smoke our brand of cigars" lecture, which translated into swamp language means get the F outta here before we carry you out.

According the related Dailer Caller article some quotes obtained from Tillemann's secret recording, the "decision" to support his opponent, was, well pragmatic:

“Staying out of primaries sounds small-D democratic, very intellectual, and very interesting,” Hoyer said. “But it was clear that it was our policy and our hope that, early on, try to come to an agreement on a candidate that we thought could win the general, and to give that candidate all the help we could give them.”

“I am for Crow because a judgment was made very early on. I didn’t know Crow. I didn’t participate in the decision. But a decision was made early on by the Colorado delegation,” Hoyer added.

Analogy: if your buddy tells you he is going to jump off a bridge, you do it too for the sake of unity.

Now, I'm gonna find me a cigar smoking' dude and light him up.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBfHpIRm5Qk]

Tags:

Democrats

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Progressives

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Comments

Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 7:25am

Dirty politics - as usual

How very, very little has changed since the days of Tammany Hall. It's just that for a while both parties felt it expedient to put on the mask of "reform" - and now both parties have discarded it as unnecessary.

—

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Submitted by Snode on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 9:01am

Since H. H. Humphrey at least

@TheOtherMaven the chosen (in a smoke filled room) candidate, who never won a primary. Entertainment was provided when the hippies who showed up to be beaten on live TV for every ones pleasure. I guess the d's just long for the good old days, prolonging wars, beating hippies.

Submitted by Lookout on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 8:19am

do you find it ironic...

We have definitive proof of the dimocraps cheating in elections, and they holler Russia?

Seems we can't see the obvious.

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by MsGrin on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 11:23am

@Lookout ...and it's not like this

@Lookout ...and it's not like this is an isolated event. Similar evidence is trickling out from other races. Moser in Texas ended up making it into the run off after her electorate learned what DNC had done to her. The runoff is in mid-May - we'll see how that goes.

The establishment succeeded in getting a Centrist (he formerly called himself a Reagan Republican) into the runoff over the Progressive in my district, unfortunately. We had 3 men and a woman end up running - I think we had as many as 9 candidates start in the roadshow of 2017. We ended up with 3 men and a woman. The woman was by far the least experienced candidate and she made gaffs which did not make me feel confident she could represent us well (she threw a tantrum in public which diminished my respect for her). We had the two guys I've described plus another guy who is as close to a progressive as the establishment can produce, and the two progressives split that vote category. The woman was actually the top vote-getter, theory being that this was a year when women wanted to see women on the ballot. It's possible I saw upwards of a dozen forums with these candidates - it's hard for me to believe that if those forums had been more accessible to view that the outcome would have been what it was. This is about as actually progressive a town as there is in the country and we chose a DINO as one of our finalists. He spoke to a group of gun enthusiasts (this is Texas) and they challenged him about whether he was running on the correct ticket given his beliefs. His response was that he is running on the "American Ticket"... (There were 19 candidates running on the other side of the aisle, btw.)

—

'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

Submitted by Lookout on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 12:41pm

I like Jimmy's line...

@MsGrin

They would rather lose to a republican than win with a progressive.

Another good Jimmy line -
When democrats run as republicans, the republicans always win.

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by FuturePassed on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 7:01pm

This

@Lookout

When democrats run as republicans, the republicans always win.

Jimmy was closely paraphrasing Harry Truman.

Submitted by Wink on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 2:33pm

Somebody there then needs

to run as an Indie or Green or Working Families Party or... just to fuck them up. We can't worry about Labels.
@MsGrin
They certainly don't. We just need to keep running progressives out there, even if it's as a rep. of a newly formed party, the Take No Prisoners party. We need to keep running progressives at these sonsabitches until voters catch on.

—

the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 10:13am

Obama was the real trail-blazer

He Hoovered up the Dems' money because he really didn't care if anyone else won as long as he did. This piece from last year contains an apt quote:

“[With] all due respect to President Obama, OFA was created as a shadow party because Obama operatives had no faith in state parties. So I hope the OFA role is none. I hope OFA closes their doors and allows the country and state parties to get to the hard work of rebuilding the party at the local and grass-roots level,” said Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb, echoing a sentiment that has dominated private chatter among state party chairs for months. “OFA had no faith or confidence in the state parties so they created a whole separate organization, they took money away and centralized it in D.C. They gave us a great president for eight years, but we lost everywhere else."

But yeah, Clinton's got them on the hook now, as the Democratic Party is paying millions for Hillary Clinton's email list. Private servers really do pay off!

At any rate, it appears that the primary political force keeping the Democratic Party alive is the progressives. Take the progressives out of the Democratic Party, and Democrat money will disappear faster than it's being raised, right into the hands of those who currently use it as an unlimited ATM. Let's take a look at a choice quote from that last link:

Don Fowler, a DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and at-large member who previously served as chair of the DNC and the South Carolina Democratic Party, cautioned that the lack of adequate funding could be devastating to the party’s electoral prospects. “The state parties in most of these states that continually vote for Republicans, they don’t have either the money or the talent to build a party in a systematic way,” he explained. “You have to have financial backing, people who know how to do these things, and you don’t know how to do these things just because you want to do them.”

"Talent" no doubt = willingness to offer the public anything it might want or need. Yep, it's not there, except maybe there are a lot of progressives out there desperately wishing to believe that the Democrats are the Great White Hope coming any second now to rescue them from the Republicans. They provide the audience for the PR that keeps the Democratic Party black hole of money from being sucked up in its own event horizon. And of course there's another force in American politics rescuing the Democratic Party today. Have you guessed it? It's the CIA.

—

“One of the things I love about the American people is that we can hold many thoughts at once” - Kamala Harris

Submitted by dkmich on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 9:24am

Obama is the worst.

@Cassiodorus

I think Obama is a more devious and a bigger liar and crook than both Clintons put together. Arrogant, self-serving, absolutely a wolf in a sheep costume.

He Hoovered up the Dems' money because he really didn't care if anyone else won as long as he did. This piece from last year contains an apt quote: “[With] all due respect to President Obama, OFA was created as a shadow party because Obama operatives had no faith in state parties. So I hope the OFA role is none. I hope OFA closes their doors and allows the country and state parties to get to the hard work of rebuilding the party at the local and grass-roots level,” said Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb, echoing a sentiment that has dominated private chatter among state party chairs for months. “OFA had no faith or confidence in the state parties so they created a whole separate organization, they took money away and centralized it in D.C. They gave us a great president for eight years, but we lost everywhere else." But yeah, Clinton's got them on the hook now, as the Democratic Party is paying millions for Hillary Clinton's email list. Private servers really do pay off! At any rate, it appears that the primary political force keeping the Democratic Party alive is the progressives. Take the progressives out of the Democratic Party, and Democrat money will disappear faster than it's being raised, right into the hands of those who currently use it as an unlimited ATM. Let's take a look at a choice quote from that last link: Don Fowler, a DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and at-large member who previously served as chair of the DNC and the South Carolina Democratic Party, cautioned that the lack of adequate funding could be devastating to the party’s electoral prospects. “The state parties in most of these states that continually vote for Republicans, they don’t have either the money or the talent to build a party in a systematic way,” he explained. “You have to have financial backing, people who know how to do these things, and you don’t know how to do these things just because you want to do them.” "Talent" no doubt = willingness to offer the public anything it might want or need. Yep, it's not there, except maybe there are a lot of progressives out there desperately wishing to believe that the Democrats are the Great White Hope coming any second now to rescue them from the Republicans. They provide the audience for the PR that keeps the Democratic Party black hole of money from being sucked up in its own event horizon. And of course there's another force in American politics rescuing the Democratic Party today. Have you guessed it? It's the CIA.

—

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Submitted by The Voice In th... on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 9:41am

Trained in Chicago.

@dkmich
What else would you expect?

—

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Submitted by SoylentGreenisPeople on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 12:57pm

You mean President Cipher?

@dkmich

While I agree with what you wrote, I'm still incensed at all the people (shills, bots, sock puppets), who for all those years defended that fucker at TOP and at other partisan places, and did so in the face of his blatant malfeasance and political betrayals.

These enablers were greater scum than him.

They are just as much responsible for this country going down hill as he was. But, I guess they got their thirty pieces of silver, and in the end, in their small pathetic minds, that's all they were capable of caring about.

Submitted by lizzyh7 on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 1:19pm

There were many of us still taken

@SoylentGreenisPeople in by him when we were back at the hell hole. I know I would absolutely cringe reading some of my former rabid defense of him and not only on TOP either. But I hear you on the current crop - if 2016 did not disavow them of their support of that bastard I surely do now know what will. But then again, it took me a few years to really see it. I voted for him in 2012 because I still had hope he'd do something as a "lame duck" and we see how well that went.

—

Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Submitted by Dr. John Carpenter on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 2:59pm

Don't hold your breath

@lizzyh7 @lizzyh7 Given the tribalism and identity politics and McResistance and everything else that has a death grip on anyone still associating with the Dems, I wouldn't lose sleep waiting for them to come around. Hell, there's still people who think Clinton the First was a Democratic hero who got sidelined by an unfair partisan witch hunt.

—

Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 4:58pm

How long did he get to play 11 dimensional chess o ToP?

@lizzyh7

4 years that's how long people kept telling those of us who complained about him. Then after those 4 years were over and he was running again people were told that we had to vote for him because now that he wasn't going to run again he could stand up to the republicans and pass his legislation.

Oh yeah, we had to vote for him because of the Supreme Court. It was always about the SC wasn't it? Same thing with Her. She has to win because she has to get Garland his seat or that Ruth might be retiring. Hell, if Obama wouldn't fight for Garland, then why should I have to hold my nose and vote for the Empty Suit again? This would have meant that I was okay with his foreign policies. I wasn't and so I didn't.

—

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

Submitted by Wink on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 2:40pm

The HillBilly Show ain't

far behind though.
@dkmich
All three have done fatal damage to the party. And that likely was by design.

—

the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 3:40pm

If these spooks win, Dems will be pro-war for 50 years

@Cassiodorus

Of the 102 primary elections to choose the Democratic nominees in these competitive districts, 44 involve candidates with a military-intelligence or State Department background, with 11 districts having two such candidates, and one district having three. In the majority of contests, the military-intelligence candidates seem likely to win the Democratic nomination, and, if the Democrats win in the general election, would enter Congress as new members of the House of Representatives.
There are some regional differences. In the Northeast, 21 of the 31 seats targeted by the Democrats have military-intelligence candidates. This area, not the South or Midwest, has the highest proportion of military-intelligence candidates seeking Democratic nominations.

In the West, only 7 of the 23 targeted seats have military-intelligence candidates, while in a half dozen seats the leading candidates are self-funded millionaires, mainly from the IT industry. There has been a wave of Republican retirements in California and wealthy people are bidding for these seats.

The Dems will have completely reverted to the 1860s. Instead of retaining black slavery, now they want universal slavery.

He Hoovered up the Dems' money because he really didn't care if anyone else won as long as he did. This piece from last year contains an apt quote: “[With] all due respect to President Obama, OFA was created as a shadow party because Obama operatives had no faith in state parties. So I hope the OFA role is none. I hope OFA closes their doors and allows the country and state parties to get to the hard work of rebuilding the party at the local and grass-roots level,” said Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb, echoing a sentiment that has dominated private chatter among state party chairs for months. “OFA had no faith or confidence in the state parties so they created a whole separate organization, they took money away and centralized it in D.C. They gave us a great president for eight years, but we lost everywhere else." But yeah, Clinton's got them on the hook now, as the Democratic Party is paying millions for Hillary Clinton's email list. Private servers really do pay off! At any rate, it appears that the primary political force keeping the Democratic Party alive is the progressives. Take the progressives out of the Democratic Party, and Democrat money will disappear faster than it's being raised, right into the hands of those who currently use it as an unlimited ATM. Let's take a look at a choice quote from that last link: Don Fowler, a DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and at-large member who previously served as chair of the DNC and the South Carolina Democratic Party, cautioned that the lack of adequate funding could be devastating to the party’s electoral prospects. “The state parties in most of these states that continually vote for Republicans, they don’t have either the money or the talent to build a party in a systematic way,” he explained. “You have to have financial backing, people who know how to do these things, and you don’t know how to do these things just because you want to do them.” "Talent" no doubt = willingness to offer the public anything it might want or need. Yep, it's not there, except maybe there are a lot of progressives out there desperately wishing to believe that the Democrats are the Great White Hope coming any second now to rescue them from the Republicans. They provide the audience for the PR that keeps the Democratic Party black hole of money from being sucked up in its own event horizon. And of course there's another force in American politics rescuing the Democratic Party today. Have you guessed it? It's the CIA.

Submitted by gulfgal98 on Sat, 04/28/2018 - 5:03pm

^^^This!!!^^^

@Alligator Ed So much truth in this comment.

—

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Submitted by Raggedy Ann on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 10:13am

We, the people

are the dirt under their shoes. We've got to turn that narrative around or all is lost. I'm grateful that it is all being exposed. However, without action, get used to being ground down to dust.

—

"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Submitted by Mark from Queens on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 12:58pm

Everytime I hear cigars or golf courses, I can only think of

the patron saint of the 99%, George Carlin. He especially eviscerated everything Neoliberals are about, before we referred to them as such.

I just searched in vain at that Neoliberal Cesspool for one of maybe a dozen exchanges I had with that douchebag "brooklyn bad boy." In which I referred to him as the water boy for the Big Club's team, and said his life's aspiration was to smoke cigars in an exclusive club, guffawing over his stock portfolio while self-deceptively patting each other on the back about how "brilliant" and important each other were.

Cigars and golf. Symbols of what I despise most about the ruling elite in this country and their fake-ass wannabe minions trying to imitate them.

—

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Submitted by earthling1 on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 2:05pm

Golf courses

@Mark from Queens
I always refer to them as:
Silver Crested Geezer Refuses.

—

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Submitted by JVolvo2 on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 5:54pm

bbb is a piece of shit. He makes his $$ trading

bonds and gets his kicks on smearing leftists. His jew-baiting smears of Sen Sanders were atrocious - when called on it he retreated to - I shit you not - "I thought Seinfeld was about Italians"

In a TPP diary in sometime in late 2016 he stated he would be happy to plant lies about Sen Sanders being connected to the KKK.

He's a piece of shit. He's probably on twitter right now posting #ImWithJoyReid

@Mark from Queens

—

JVolvo2

Submitted by SoylentGreenisPeople on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 12:58pm

Here's a piece by Mike Whitney on the state of the . . .

. . . today's Democratic Party:

http://www.unz.com/mwhitney/dems-pin-midterm-hopes-on-trump-hatred-and-l...

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 3:51pm

Excerpt from WaPo finally reflects reality

@SoylentGreenisPeople

Democrats Should Focus More on Jobs, Less on Russia,” progressive writer Robert Borosage urged his compatriots in a column for The Nation back in March. “Democrats are railing about the Russians and the last election, while Trump is talking jobs, law and order, protecting our borders, and health care. We know which of these speak to the challenges Americans face.”
(Washington Post)

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 5:10pm

"Democrats Should Focus More on ..."

@Alligator Ed

How many times have we seen that written or said since 2006 after Pelosi took up the gavel? Or said that the democrats need to grow a spine? "Reid needs to find his spine and stand up to McConnell!"

Way too many times that's for sure. The new saying is that the "democrats haven't learned the lesson from the last election." Or that "they need to do an autopsy on why Her lost."

Democrats know full well what they need to do if they want to win again. They don't really want to do that because then they'd have to work too hard to pretend that they are passing legislation that would help us. It just a game that both parties play to look like they don't agree on things.

—

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

Submitted by Wink on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 2:02pm

Cross Posted to our Patreon

page at... C99 Patreon Page

—

the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 3:53pm

I am honored. Thanks.

@Wink

Submitted by Wink on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 4:08pm

If I'm around

I'm going to try
@Alligator Ed
and cross-post there every day. Help jack the page some, and maybe bring some eyeballs back here.
Good post, A.E., as usual.

—

the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Submitted by MrWebster on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 2:20pm

Consensus of dem-sites is DCCC is A-OK and support Joy

Basically the denizens of the Mad House support the DCCC and are attacking those who think the organization is corrupt. Attacks on progressives. Major support for Joy Reid also. Appears they believe that Joy was hacked lo them many years ago, and in fact are implying she never made homophobic remarks.

If in fact candidates win elections based on some fundamental set of progressive policies, then the establishment party is in trouble as they are simply repeating's Hillary campaign of personal attacks and platitudes, and of course Russia. I get the feeling that democrats believe the blue wave is inevitable as was Hillary's victory in 2016. One reason I have my doubts is attack and treatment of progressive candidates and their supporters in various primaries. For many progressive they will experience up close how the democratic party establishment cheats in the primaries.

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 5:29pm

Or if she wasn't hacked, she gets to change her mind

@MrWebster

on how she feels about tah gays. This is what I'm seeing on ToP and other places. Why is she getting this pass? Because she was so hard on Bernie and she is hard on Trump.

So what that she said those heinous things? She is entitled to grow and see that tah gays aren't as icky as she thought they were.

In a diary on this today about people being too quick to throw her away, someone said it's just like how quickly people jumped on the anti Frankincense ship..

How those two topics go together is beyond me, but there it is

—

“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

Submitted by JVolvo2 on Fri, 04/27/2018 - 6:09pm

Greenwald replied to Joan Walsh @ 'Reid hacked' bullshit

Walsh threatened him to never cross her : D twitter is pounding her bullshit with corncob memes. Ha! The spirit of Mother Jones is puking at what Walsh has become.

"Joan Walsh
‏Verified account @joanwalsh
Apr 25

What do you think I'm saying, Glenn? What's so hard for you to understand? Of course I did NOT see any tweets of the kind, back when I was reading her blog. What are you asking? You don't really want to turn me against you, Glenn. Trust me. You don't.
122 replies 21 retweets 62 likes"

@MrWebster

—

JVolvo2