So it develops that on February 22 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar at his campaign headquarters in Laredo and voiced hope that in the party primary on March 3 Cuellar would achieve a “resounding victory” over challenger Jessica Cisneros.“We assume that Henry will win," Pelosi said, but "We want this to be not only a victory, but a resounding victory."
Henry Cuellar is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House. He votes with Tweetie-pie nearly 70% of the time, has an "A" rating from the NRA, is anti-choice, is a top recipient of money from the private prison and fossil fuel lobbies, and is the first-ever congressional Democrat to receive reelection support from Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC funded by Charles Koch Among his other supporters are the American Bankers Association, the Texas Bankers Association, and the US Chamber of Commerce. He is thoroughly wired into corporate America and the banks.
On the other hand, Jessica Cisneros is a progressive with a solidly progressive agenda, an immigration and human rights attorney running a union-backed campaign fueled by small donors and who accepts no corporate money.
But Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee would rather have Cuellar than Cisneros on the ballot and "resoundingly" so, even though the district is considered a safe Democratic one: In 2016 - remember, this is Texas - Hillary Clinton won the district by 20 percentage points over Tweetie-pie. In 2018 the GOPpers didn't even put up a candidate and Cueller got 84% of the vote against a libertarian.
And this is not the only example of this, of the Democratic party establishment rallying one of its own over a challenger, even when that challenger represented more of what the party claims to support. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently tweeted that
There are Ds in safe blue seats who side with the NRA, are anti lgbtq+, and yet are protected because they advance the interests of big donors, fossil fuels, etc.What's more, this is not even new. Two notorious examples:
In 2010, Bill Halter primaried incumbent Senator Blance Lincoln of Arkansas. Halter, Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas, was hardly some radical; but he was a little to her left and thereby in fact was that much closer to the party's platform than she was. What's more, he consistently outdid her in head-to-head match-ups against the likely GOPper candidate.
Even so, the party establishment closed ranks around Lincoln to the point where in the closing days of the race, they openly campaigned against labor on her behalf. With that support, she won the primary - and, as the polls had predicted, went on to lose in November.
Even earlier: In 2006, Ned Lamont primaried Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut on an anti-war platform. He won the primary, upon which Lieberman ran as an independent with the not entirely implicit support of the Democratic party establishment, which gave only perfunctory support to Lamont. Lieberman won, much to the relief of the institutional Democratic party.
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| Nancy Pelosi |
Yes, certainly there are individuals who have been and are fighting the good fight - I've already named one - and certainly, there are individuals who were or are on our side on specific issues. But as a group, as a whole, they are not. As a group, as a whole, they are on our side insofar as and only insofar as it's necessary to protect their positions, their privileges, and their sinecures.
They'll ignore us, fight us, resist us, and then for the sake of their own benefit, they'll try to take credit for what we gained by our efforts.
After his victory in the Nevada caucuses, Bernie Sanders tweeted of the Republican and Democratic party establishments "They can't stop us." In response, longtime Democratic party strategist Joe Lockhart tweeted "The Democratic establishment gave us civil rights, voting rights, the assault weapons ban, social security and Medicare. What have you done Senator?"
Hey Lockhart: You didn't "give" us anything! We won it. All of it. Every one of those things came as the result of years, usually decades, of organizing, marching, protesting, lobbying, petitions, letters, phone calls, court suits, nonviolent civil disobedience, and yes, voting. We did it. Not you. So I turn the question back to you, Lockhart: Can you, can anyone in the Democratic party establishment, name one gain that has come without significant outside pressure? Can you name one advance that originated in the upper echelons of the Democratic party establishment? You can't because you didn't "give" us squat.
And you're not going to "give" us single-payer health insurance, a living wage, or a livable future for ourselves and our children. Remember Nancy Pelosi snidely calling the Green New Deal "The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they're for it, right?" Remember that? None of that will happen, none of those gains will be made, without us constantly, constantly, pushing you, taking what we gain and coming back again and again for more.
They are not on our side. You, Mr. Lockhart, are not on our side.
Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, I still recall with bitterness how during the Obama years she blocked House votes on the Peoples Budget produced annually by the Congressional Progressive Caucus as well as on progressive motions to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - even though they likely wouldn't pass at that point - because she was not going to allow the demonstration of any opposition to Obama policies among Democrats.
And it's not just the political establishment, its the media establishment as well, which can easily be seen in the treatment of Bernie Sanders. Now, full disclosure: I supported Sanders in 2016 and I support him this time, but what I'm addressing here is not because of him in particular; I strongly suspect that if he wasn't running, Elizabeth Warren, who is the most progressive of the other candidates, would be getting much the same treatment, getting the same "too far left, too radical, can't win" line so beloved of the pundits. Maybe it wouldn't be to the same degree, but yes it would be there.
The night of the Nevada caucuses, Chris Matthews of MSNBC said
I'm wondering if Democratic moderates want Bernie Sanders to be President? Maybe that's too exciting a question to raise. Do they want Bernie to take over the Democratic Party in perpetuity? Maybe they'd rather wait four years and put in a Democrat that they like.In other words, he was suggesting that the party leaders would prefer four more years of Tweetie-pie to a Sanders presidency.
During a radio interview on February 21, MSNBC contributor and journalism professor Jason Johnson said, referring to Sanders,
I don't care how many people from the island of misfit black girls that you throw out there to defend you on a regular basis.Informed by the host that he had "crossed the line," Johnson, who is African-American, replied "I don't care."
Chuck Todd, host of Meet the Press, approvingly quoted a column calling Sanders' supporters a "digital brownshirt brigade." Chris Matthews compared Sanders' win in Nevada with the Nazi takeover of France in 1940 - for which, be fair, he apologized the next day.
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| Bernie Sanders |
And then of course there is the plethora of "Sanders is just like Trump" articles, all of them with the unstated subhead of "If you think Tweetie-pie is too extreme, you have to think the same of Sanders."
A typical example is Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post, declaring in his own paper on February 23 that Sanders and Tweetie-pie "both reject the reality of climate change." How? Tweetie-pie, of course, by considering it a hoax, while Sanders does it by the “fantasy extremism” of his climate plan. That is, he takes climate change too seriously, is in too much of a hurry to get something done. And who does Hiatt rely on for a non-extreme plan? The CEO of Total Oil, one of the seven largest oil companies in the world.
But nothing illustrates the bias as clearly as the foofaraw over Sanders being pushed on a statement he made in 1985 praising some aspects of the rule of Fidel Castro, specifically his literacy program and health care. He has been asked about it twice in town halls and been attacked not only by Democrats in Florida, but some of his opponents for the nomination for offering anything other than unreserved condemnation for anything to do with Fidel Castro.
Leaving aside the question of if people will or even should care about an opinion he expressed 35 years ago, the utter dishonesty of how this has been dealt with in the media is I was going to say appalling but I think telling is the better word.
First, consider this:
- Cubans not only have the highest life expectancy in the geographical region, but also place among the top five in the world.
- In 2014, the country was praised by Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO, as a world leader in the medical sphere.
- UNESCO has rated Cuba's as the best education system in Latin America. Literacy is at 99.8%.
Simply put, what Bernie Sanders said in 1985, what he to his credit stands by today, was true. He did not endorse Castro's regime, he did not excuse the oppression, the political imprisonment, the denial of freedoms. But he did make a true statement about certain social programs. And as he said, "truth is truth."
But truth is not good enough. Truth is not a defense when it comes to describing those who the political establishment has declared beyond the pale, nor is it a defense when the speaker is an outsider, is a threat to the establishment that needs to be crushed.
You don't believe me? Quote:
Castro brought superb systems of healthcare and education to his people.That was Jimmy Carter, speaking in 2002. Or how about this:
The United States recognizes the progress that Cuba has made as a nation, its enormous achievements in education and in health care.That was Barack Obama, speaking in Cuba on March, 21, 2016. And that wasn't even the first time he said it.
Do you recall any uproar about either of those? Do you recall either of those men being read out of political life on the grounds that they were "embracing a dictator?"
Of course not because it didn't happen because neither of them was thought to be an outsider, to be not a member of the establishment and therefore a threat to it.
And so Sanders continues to get pummeled. Not because he lied but because he spoke an unpopular truth - or importantly more to the point, a truth that the media and Democratic party establishments will strive and are striving to turn into an unpopular truth, not because they want to crush Bernie Sanders in particular but because they want to crush any challenge to their social and political hegemony.
They are not on our side. And they will continue to not be on our side, to ignore us, to dismiss us, to deny us as the lord of the manor denied the bastard son he fathered by the servant girl even when that boy was the legitimate heir - that is, to bring this back to reality, to deny us even when we represent the majority. It will go on until we make it impossible for them to continue to do so.
There is yet much to be gained, much to strive for, allies and alliances to be made and lost, and undoubtedly many unavoidable compromises to be made along the way. But never forget: They are not on our side.
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