Meet the Democrats who took Donald Trump’s money

I absolutely hate Ted Cruz’s guts. As a candidate for president, he has openly supported religious discrimination and does not believe in separation of church and state, for starters. He’s also what I consider to be the least electable Republican presidential candidate, except for maybe Jeb Bush or Ben Carson.

However, I will say one thing favorably about Ted Cruz, and that is the fact that his campaign is going after Donald Trump for propping up the Republican wing of the Democratic Party with his checkbook for many years. Granted, Cruz’s people aren’t all that great at spelling and grammar, but here’s the individuals and groups affiliated with the Democratic Party in some way, shape, and form:

• Jimmy Carter – $1,000 – Carter was the 39th President of the United States, elected in 1976, lost re-election in 1980. Carter has not sought public office of any kind since losing the presidency. Carter has actually built a progressive reputation since leaving the White House, although he did deregulate the airline industry and gave out a huge capital gains tax cut to the wealthy as President.
• Max Baucus – $2,000 – Baucus was appointed to the U.S. Senate after originally being elected to it in 1978 and represented Montana in the Senate until 2014, when he resigned to take a political appointment from President Barack Obama in order to serve as U.S. Ambassador to China. Baucus was notorious for being a virulent opponent of single-payer health care during his time in the Senate.
• Shelley Berkley – $1,000 – Berkley served seven terms in the U.S. House from 1999 to 2013. Berkley represented the Las Vegas area of Nevada, where Trump has substantial business interests, in the House.
• Joe Biden – $1,000 – Biden, who is from Delaware and represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for decades, is currently Vice President of the United States. Vice President Biden ran for president twice, in 1988 and 2008, losing both times; in fact, his first presidential campaign was derailed after he was caught plagiarizing then-British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.
• Erskine Bowles – $1,000 – Bowles, who is from North Carolina, served in multiple positions in the Bill Clinton Administration, and he also ran for U.S. Senate in North Carolina twice, losing both times. Bowles was one of the architects of the Simpson-Bowles austerity plan that included, among other things, cutting Social Security benefits.
• Hillary Clinton – $9,500 – Hillary was a First Lady of the United States, a U.S. Senator from New York, and a U.S. Secretary of State. New York is Trump’s home state and a state where Trump has significant business interests. Hillary is currently seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, running against single-payer health care and reinstating Glass-Steagall financial regulations that kept commercial and investment banks separate. As Secretary of State, Hillary helped develop the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade giveaway that would allow Vietnam, a country where the average worker is paid far less than the average worker here in the U.S., to effectively dictate U.S. domestic policy by allowing investors to sue in special courts. Hillary also ran a presidential campaign in 2008, losing the Democratic nomination to now-President Obama after, among other things, she pandered to white racists throughout her campaign.
• Tom Daschle – $4,000 – Daschle, who is from South Dakota, is a former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, and he was Senate Minority Leader when he was defeated in the 2004 Senate election in South Dakota. Daschle was a lobbyist for the health care industry after leaving elected office, and he wrote a book opposing single-payer health care.
• Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) – $116,000 – The DSCC is an entity established by the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus to funnel money to Democrats running for Senate seats.
• Chris Dodd – $3,000 – Dodd is a former U.S. Senator from Connecticut. Dodd ran for president in 2008, losing in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, and he’s now a lobbyist for the movie industry.
• Democratic National Committee (DNC) – $15,000 – The DNC is the main national organization of the Democratic Party, currently chaired by U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. The DNC has openly tried to sabotage the Sanders presidential campaign, most notably by briefly cutting off the Sanders campaign’s access to the DNC voter file in violation of the contract between the Sanders campaign and the DNC vendor responsible for maintaining the DNC’s voter file.
• Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) – $46,050 – The DCCC is an entity established by the U.S. House Democratic Caucus to funnel money to Democrats running for House seats. The DCCC ran web ads promoting President Obama’s proposed cuts to Social Security benefits in 2013.
• Dick Durbin – $1,500 – Durbin is the Assistant Minority Leader in the U.S. Senate, representing Illinois. Illinois is a state where Trump has significant business interests.
• Fritz Hollings – $3,000 – Hollings was a U.S. Senator from South Carolina for nearly four decades. Hollings had a history of making racist and anti-Semitic comments as a Senator. Hollings voted against the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act.
• Ted Kennedy – $7,000 – Kennedy was a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts for over four and a half decades before dying in office in 2009. Kennedy ran against then-incumbent President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries and caucuses, losing the nomination to Carter. Kennedy supported the 2007 George W. Bush-backed immigration reform plan that would have established slavery-like guest worker programs, and he also supported the 2001 No Child Left Behind law that destroyed public education in America.
• Patrick Kennedy – $2,500 – Kennedy, who is a son of Ted Kennedy, represented parts of Rhode Island in the U.S. House for nearly two decades. Kennedy is also a former DCCC chairman.
• Harry Reid – $8,400 – Reid is currently U.S. Senate Minority Leader, representing Nevada in the Senate. Reid has publicly praised Trump in recent months, and he has called for the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision, which protects abortion and reproductive rights, to be overturned.
• Rahm Emanuel – $50,000 – Emanuel is currently the Mayor of Chicago, Illinois, and, before that, he was a U.S. Representative and a DCCC chairman. Prior to his first mayoral bid, he was President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff. Rahm played a role in the cover-up of the video of the police shooting of LaQuan McDonald, and he’s strongly supported privatizing city government services in Chicago.
• Kirsten Gillibrand – $4,800 – Gillibrand currently represents New York in the U.S. Senate.
• Terry McAuliffe – $25,000 – McAuliffe is currently the Governor of Virginia. Prior to that, he was the DNC chairman the last time that the Democratic presidential nominee lost a general election for president.
• Elliot Spitzer – $21,000 – Spitzer was Governor of New York for a little more than a year from 2007 to 2008 before resigning from office after his involvement in prostitution became public knowledge. Spitzer ran for New York City Comptroller in 2013, losing in the Democratic primary.
• Andrew Cuomo – $84,000 – Cuomo is the current Governor of New York. Cuomo is very right-wing on economic issues, including openly railing against public employee unions and supporting tax breaks for businesses. Cuomo disbanded a special commission that he established to root out corruption in New York State politics after the commission was actually doing its job.
• David Dinkins – $7,750 – Dinkins was Mayor of New York City, New York for four years in the early 1990’s. Dinkins lost re-election in 1993 to Republican police brutality apologist Rudy Guiliani.
• Chuck Schumer – $7,900 – Schumer is currently the senior U.S. Senator from New York. Schumer has publicly opposed the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal that is designed to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of Iran.
• New York State Democratic Committee (NYSDC) – $116,000 – The NYSDC is the official state-level Democratic Party organization for New York State. In it’s current form, the NYSDC has acted as an arm’s length organization of corrupt New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
• Anthony Weiner – $4,450 – Weiner has also gone under the alias Carlos Danger. Weiner was U.S. Representative from New York City for over a decade until he was forced to resign after he was caught sending sexually explicit pictures of himself via Twitter to a female follower of Weiner’s Twitter page. Weiner ran in the 2013 New York City mayoral election, losing the Democratic primary after he was caught sending sexually explicit pictures of himself to a different woman.
• John Kerry – $5,500 – Kerry is the current U.S. Secretary of State. Prior to being appointed by President Obama to the Secretary of State’s post, Kerry served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts for nearly three decades, and, before that, Kerry was Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts for nearly two years. Kerry also ran for President in 2004, losing to Republican incumbent George W. Bush. To this day, Kerry is the last Democratic presidential nominee to lose a general election for president.
• Joe Lieberman – $4,000 – Lieberman is a former U.S. Senator from Connecticut. Lieberman was a Democrat until 2006, when he ran under Connecticut for Lieberman political party banner after losing the Democratic primary in his re-election bid, and Lieberman went on to win the general election that year. Lieberman also was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee on the unsuccessful Al Gore/Joe Lieberman ticket in 2000, and Lieberman himself ran for president in 2004, losing the Democratic nomination. Lieberman has publicly supported Republicans, including speaking at the 2008 Republican National Convention that nominated John McCain for president and Sarah Palin for vice-president, a ticket that went on to lose in a landslide to the Obama/Biden Democratic ticket.
• Carolyn Maloney – $4,000 – Maloney has represented parts of New York City in the U.S. House since 1993.
• Bill Nelson – $2,000 – Nelson has represented Florida in the U.S. Senate since 2001. Nelson was the only Democratic Senator to vote against defunding the torture programs that were run by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in committee in 2007.

Donald Trump has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to prop up the Republican wing of the Democratic Party for decades. Now, he’s running for the Republican nomination on a platform of bigotry against anyone who isn’t a white racist, enacting Nazi Gemrany-like measures against Muslims, and giving tax breaks to rich people like himself. I encourage people to vote and caucus for Bernie Sanders, if their state has not already held a Democratic presidential nomination contest, in order to send a loud and clear message to corporate Democrats that we’re sick and tired of Donald Trump’s Democrats running the party into the ground.

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It’s time for Bernie to run an effective attack ad against Hillary

As much as I admire Bernie Sanders for having (so far) stuck to a campaign promise not to run negative campaign ads in his campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, I think that it’s past time for Bernie to run a damn good attack ad against Hillary Clinton and the Clinton political machine.

If I were running Bernie’s campaign, here’s how I would draw it up (please note that this is NOT an actual campaign ad):

Narrator: While Hillary Clinton represented New York State in the U.S. Senate, she took campaign cash from a guy who said this about millions of Americans…

(clip of Donald Trump “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” quote)

Narrator: Donald Trump, now a Republican presidential candidate, gave campaign contributions to then-U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton. What is now-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton saying about Trump’s offensive remarks about the American people?

(clip of Hillary Clinton “I’m going to let him live in his alternate reality. I’m not going to respond.” quote)

Narrator: If nominated by the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders isn’t going to let Donald Trump’s offensive rhetoric about the majority of Americans go unchallenged, and he certainly isn’t going to take Donald Trump’s money.

Bernie Sanders: I’m Bernie Sanders, and I approve this message.

Yes, Hillary took campaign cash from Trump when she was a U.S. Senator. It’s true. It’s damn true. More importantly, there’s absolutely nothing that Hillary and her supporters can do to hide the fact that Hillary took campaign contributions for a far-right bigot who has a penchant for offensive rhetoric.

There are times where it is necessary for a politician to go against his or her own principles to do a bold thing to move closer to making America a far better place to live. In this case, the bold thing for Bernie to do is run such an effective attack ad against Hillary, nobody is going to forget it.

Bernie strongly supports paid family and medical leave…Hillary doesn’t

If you support federally-guaranteed paid family, medical, maternity, and paternity leave for American workers, then Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate for president that strongly supports what you believe in on this important issue:

(Bernie) Sanders also backs a bill pending in Congress that would mandate employers provide paid family leave time after a child is born. The bill would be funded by an increase in payroll taxes estimated to cost the average worker about $72 a year.

(Hillary) Clinton has spoken out forcefully for the concept of paid family leave but not embraced the particular measure because it violates a campaign pledge not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000.

While Hillary Clinton is busy twisting her own campaign platform into a political pretzel because of her Grover Norquist-like campaign pledge to not raise taxes on the low-end wealthy, Bernie Sanders is strongly advocating for actual legislation designed to allow workers to care for their families in times of need. For Bernie, supporting guaranteed paid leave isn’t just talk, it’s something that he’s actually proposed in Congress. Earlier this year, Bernie co-sponsored legislation that would allow “mothers and fathers to receive 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for a baby” and allow “workers to take the same amount of paid time off if they are diagnosed with cancer or have other serious medical conditions or to take care of family members who are seriously ill” (fact sheet here).

Chuck Schumer sides against America on the Iran nuclear deal

You’ve probably heard of the 47 traitors in the U.S. Senate Republican caucus, who, earlier this year, signed a letter opposing the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran and boasting that the next president, which they hope is a fellow Republican, could unilaterally overturn the Iran deal.

Well, there’s now a 48th traitor, and this one’s a Democrat: U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is likely to become the next leader of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate. In announcing his opposition, Schumer repeated the right-wing lies that the Republican presidential candidates and other prominent Republicans have used in opposition to the Iran deal:

I will vote to disapprove the agreement, not because I believe war is a viable or desirable option, nor to challenge the path of diplomacy…It is because I believe Iran will not change, and under this agreement it will be able to achieve its dual goals of eliminating sanctions while ultimately retaining its nuclear and non-nuclear power.

Schumer’s claims are absolute bullshit. The truth of the matter is that Iran would give up the vast majority of its nuclear program if the nuclear deal is fully implemented. As someone who is very isolationist when it comes to foreign policy, I’m not normally the kind of person to support any kind of collaboration between foreign nations. However, since the Iran deal would prevent a nuclear war between the U.S. and Iran, I’ve gone well out of my way to support the Iran deal and criticize war hawks in both major parties who oppose it.

Chuck Schumer is nothing more than a shill for Israel who thinks that Benjamin Netanyahu should dictate what kind of foreign policy the U.S. can and can’t adopt. If a Republican is elected president next year, Schumer would probably be not much more than a rubber stamp for a GOP president, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

Did Harry Reid throw Chuck Schumer under the bus?

POLITICO published this article about the backroom dealings that resulted in Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a staunch supporter of protecting consumers from Wall Street grid being appointed to a leadership position in the U.S. Senate as the Strategic Policy Adviser of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), which is run by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Wall Street’s favorite Democratic Senator.

Having read the article it sounds like soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) threw Schumer, who, despite being the #3 Democrat in the U.S. Senate, has long been viewed as Reid’s inevitable successor, under the bus by putting Warren into a leadership position:

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has long been viewed as the heir apparent to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, with such strong support among moderates that a group of them privately urged him to mount a coup for party leader after the midterm election meltdown.

Schumer didn’t take on Reid — he’s too loyal — but he is being forced to face a new power center inside the caucus, populists such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

When Reid was in talks with Warren about a job in Senate leadership earlier this month, Schumer suggested tapping moderate Sen. Mark Warner, too, to balance out her progressive politics — or perhaps making her a “liaison to liberal groups,” a narrower job than what Reid had proposed, according to sources familiar with the private talks.

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said no to both of Schumer’s suggestions, later taking the job as a policy adviser to Schumer’s messaging operation.

Warren’s rise in Senate leadership – and her popularity among grassroots liberals – represents an unexpected presence in Schumer’s leadership orbit, where he has spent years cultivating a reputation as one of the masterminds of Democratic messaging.

As one Senate Democratic source put it: “The turf [Schumer] thought he knew may have shifted beneath his feet.”

Schumer and his fellow Wall Street Democrats can deny this all they want, but Reid, who is not a hero to progressives by any stretch of the imagination, may have very well ended any chance of Schumer becoming the leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate. It’s pretty clear to me that Schumer got rolled big time by Reid, and Schumer has been trying to cover his ass ever since, first by trying to get Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), a fellow corporate hack, appointed to the DPCC, and then by trying to dismiss Warren and referring to her as a “liberal liaison” to the corporate media.

Elizabeth Warren is not going to be some liaison selling Chuck Schumer’s snake oil to progressive groups. She’s a bona fide progressive who could very well end up being Senate Democratic Leader someday, and, needless to say, Schumer and his fellow old boys and girls network members don’t like that one damn bit.