posted 07-09-2019 09:38 AM                  

After almost 200 years, the Democrats were a political party with conventional political goals. That's no longer true. The Democratic Party is now a religious cult, with all that implies. Dissent has been banned. Anyone who questions the party's leftward fringe is denounced as a racist heretic.

The party has descended into a purity spiral, and nobody is safe, not even the party's own leaders. Take Nancy Pelosi, for example. She is the most left-wing Speaker of the House in the history of the United States. She has been a fire-breathing liberal for longer than, I don't know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been alive.

But none of that has been enough to save her. Ocasio-Cortez and a tiny group of House freshmen demand explicit socialism in this country right now. They want to open the borders, empty the prisons and take over the entire U.S. economy in the name of fighting climate change.

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Now, Pelosi may agree with these goals, but she has contempt for their total ignorance of how laws are made. They're against the democratic system itself, and Pelosi has expressed that contempt repeatedly in public.

Lesley Stahl, "60 Minutes": You have these wings, AOC and her group on one side.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: That's like five people.

So, for saying things like that, Pelosi is facing a revolt from within the Democratic Party. She's being denounced. Guess what they're calling her? You know ... a racist.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib explains that Pelosi is oppressing people of color:

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.: More people like us -- people of color -- have been missing in the [House] chamber, because most of us -- and Ayanna Pressley says it more beautifully -- people that are closest to the pain need to be at the table making these decisions. Guess what? We know what it feels like to be dehumanized. We know what it feels like to be brown and black in this country.

Martha Raddatz, ABC News: What would you say to Nancy Pelosi? What would you say directly to Nancy Pelosi?

Tlaib: Uplift the women, especially the women of color, within your caucus that are out there. Because I'll tell you, more people like us, more people like me, that come out to vote [means] we win. All of us win.

"Give us power because of our skin color." That's the argument Tlaib is making. Many make that argument; Ocasio-Cortez made the very same case during her Democratic primary campaign last year.

By definition, it is a racist pitch. It's every bit as repugnant as a white candidate making the same appeal. And many Democrats did make that appeal -- that racial appeal -- under Jim Crow. "Vote for me because of my race." It's disgusting. But it's everywhere now, and Democrats applaud it.

On Sunday, for example, former Obama spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted, Ocasio-Cortez and her faction provide "the vision and moral center of today's Democratic Party." That's a view that is widely shared, and it is bad news for people like Joe Biden.

Like Pelosi, Biden has dedicated his entire life to the Democratic Party. As Pelosi has, Biden has dutifully moved left with the party over the years and hasn't complained about it. He is currently running on, for example, free health care for illegal aliens.

But none of it has been enough. People like Joe Biden are the past in the Democratic Party. And like so many others he is being denounced as -- wait for it - a racist.

It's over for Joe Biden -- a bitter end to what might have been a decent political career. Only he seems to be unaware of that. On Saturday, Biden groveled one last time in a doomed effort to save himself.

Joe Biden, 2020 presidential candidate: Now was I wrong a few weeks ago, to somehow give the impression to people that I was praising those men who I successfully opposed time and again? Yes, I was. I regret it. I'm sorry for your pain or misconception they may have caused anybody.

Afterward, Biden said, "That's why I chose here in South Carolina and chose an audience that in fact is -- would be -- the most likely to have been offended by anything that was said." But it's pointless for Biden. It's spitting in the wind. To the Democratic Party, remorse is a sign of weakness, and the weak are eaten.

Shortly after Biden spoke those words, Michelle Obama was asked her view. Now, a decent person might have said a kind word about her old friend, Joe. He was the man, after all, who helped make her husband president and served under him for eight years.

But that's not what Michelle Obama did.

Gayle King: What, if anything, would you like to say about the Kamala-Biden dust-up? He apologized today. You've been following that. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Michelle Obama, former first lady: I do not.

King: Okay. Let me ask you this. Moving on. Moving on.

Obama: I've been doing this rodeo far too long.

King: Yes, moving on. Moving on.

Obama: Like, no comment.

"Moving on. No comment." Joe Biden not worth defending. He's over, just like Thomas Jefferson and Betsy Ross and all kinds of other people who aren't absolutely aligned with the modern "woke" left.
Tucker Carlson Tonight – Monday, July 8Video

The Democratic Party demands absolute perfect fidelity at all times. Anyone who fails to measure up is finished forever. Now, that attitude is an effective way to terrify weak people and keep public figures in line. But the question electorally is, will it work on the country?

Normal Americans know they're not racist. They don't think their neighbors and friends are racist, either. They don't care about that. They care about their jobs, their safety, their families, their country. For years, they've watched in despair as both major parties drifted away from those concerns.

They took a chance electing Donald Trump because he seemed willing to put the basics first. Will they re-elect him is the question.

posted 07-09-2019 09:45 AM                  

AOC-aligned group targets moderate Dems, has blue dogs looking ‘over their shoulders’
By Gregg Re | Fox News

The left-wing activist group that spearheaded the political rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now working to take down several incumbent Democrats who have defied the party's freshman progressive wing, leaving some of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's loyalists on Capitol Hill anxiously wondering if they might soon fall in the crosshairs themselves.

Justice Democrats, which was co-founded by Ocasio-Cortez chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, has already announced it is looking to unseat seven-term pro-life Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who represents a conservative district and has boasted about his endorsement from the National Rifle Association. Also on the list: New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman who's currently in his 16th term.

Cuellar and Engel each have primary challengers, and all indications are that the campaigns will be contentious. While Ocasio-Cortez has stopped short of issuing endorsements in the races, Chakrabarti tweeted a link to a website accepting donations for Cuellar's challenger in June, adding caustically, "Cuellar votes with Trump more than some Republicans ... [and] votes most with big oil, private prison corps, and the gun lobby."

From the leadership to the rank-and-file, many House Democrats don't see much daylight between themselves and Justice Democrats' two current targets -- and that has them worried.

“Members are looking over their shoulders,” Kentucky Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth, who chairs the House Budget Committee, told Politico this week.
Added Virginia Democratic Rep. Don Beyer, who serves as finance co-chair for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: "It's not just older white men, but everybody including younger incumbent women is looking over their left shoulder."

Engel, who is Jewish, was among the House Democrats who criticized freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar after controversial remarks suggesting Israel supporters were loyal to a foreign country. Engel said back in March, “it's unacceptable and deeply offensive to call into question the loyalty of fellow American citizens.”

Both Engel and Cuellar also joined virtually all of their colleagues last month in supporting House Democratic leaders' failed $4.5 billion proposal to fund border facilities, which was opposed by only four Democratic members of Congress, all in their first terms: Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.

A separate $4.6 billion proposal, with less robust protections for migrants, later passed, again over the fierce objections of the freshman contingent. Engel opposed that measure, while Cuellar voted for it.

In a testy interview Sunday with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Tlaib stood by her "no" vote on each proposal, saying the system was "broken" and claiming that during a visit to a border detention facility, "three agents took me aside, away from my colleagues and said, more money is not going to fix this, that they were not trained to separate children, that they don't want to separate two-year-olds away from their mothers."

That interview came amid a public spat between Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi, that began when Pelosi told the New York Times last week that “all these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” referring to the House Democrats who voted against the border aid bill. On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez fired back, listing a series of dismissive comments Pelosi had made about Ocasio-Cortez's political acumen and policy proposals.

That kind of zeal in the face of mainstream and establishment scrutiny has become the hallmark of the new left-wing freshman class in the House. Yet progressive organizations worry that, emboldened by Ocasio-Cortez and others, a glut of Democratic challengers might divide the anti-incumbent vote in some districts, helping House members they are targeting survive party primaries. In 40 states, the primary winner needs only the largest share of votes, and there is no runoff.

"On both counts, the extremes of the party are causing problems for the party in terms of maintaining seats," David McLennan, a political science professor at Meredith College in North Carolina, said last month.

Democrats in particular appeared to be experiencing the brunt of the new insurgent tidal wave. There are approximately 260 declared House Democratic challengers through May this year. Of those, 103, or 40 percent, were in districts with sitting Democrats, not GOP-held or open seats.

By contrast, there were just 212 declared GOP House challengers. Only 37, or 17 percent, would oppose Republican incumbents.

In all, Justice Democrats has said it intends to recruit fewer than the dozen House challengers it enlisted and mentored in 2018. Ocasio-Cortez was their only winner. They also endorsed 66 other House, Senate and state candidates, of whom six won.

"We used to think it was quantity," said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, which has around 10 staffers and reported spending just $2.5 million in 2018. But because of Ocasio-Cortez's impact, pressuring even Democratic presidential candidates to address issues like climate change and universal health care, Rojas says she now believes "it's more about one big race can really transform everything and shift the political landscape."
Does an endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez matter in the 2020 primary?
Does an endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez matter in the 2020 primary?

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are reportedly battling for an endorsement from the progressive freshman lawmaker.

It's premature to gauge whether the enthusiasm progressives say they're observing will translate to serious primary candidacies. The overwhelming majority of challengers fail due to funding, organizational and name-recognition shortcomings.

Still, party leaders note that just four of the House's 435 members were defeated in primaries last year, two from each party, with most lawmakers facing no primaries because they seemed unbeatable. Only three times since 1974 have the number of incumbents losing primaries reached double digits.

Activists say they will concentrate their efforts on safely Democratic seats. Top Democrats argue that still endangers their House majority by forcing incumbents to spend money defending themselves in primaries, siphoning funds that could have helped the party elsewhere.

"You end up losing seats based on litmus tests," said former Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., a former DCCC chairman.

Looking to thwart progressives and other challengers, DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., wrote private consultants earlier this year that her committee won't conduct business with firms that work with primary challengers to sitting Democrats. She said the DCCC's "core mission" includes protecting incumbents.

Bustos and others say because much of the committee's budget comes from dues paid by House Democrats, it shouldn't work with firms that try unseating those same incumbents.

That's not stopping progressives from preparing to challenge incumbent Democrats they consider too conservative. Those most mentioned include Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., as well as Reps. Stephen Lynch and Richard Neal, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.