53percenter's Blog

Democrats are turning on each other. Out of money, out of ideas, zero accomplishments, and with no goodies to dispense, they are now moving into a full-blown hatefest against one other. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her squad, it turns out, were just the least of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s problems.

Here’s the dumpster fire going on with angry black and Latino representatives effectively accusing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the group charged with holding the House for the Democrats, of racism, according to Politico:

Senior Hispanic and black members of Congress have privately clashed with Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) over her personnel decisions, what they say are tone-deaf comments on race and whether she’s lived up to the promises she made during the campaign to win the chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“There is not one person of color — black or brown, that I’m aware of — at any position of authority or decision-making in the DCCC,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “It is shocking, it is shocking, and something needs to be done about it.”

Bustos sought a meeting with Fudge, and Fudge said no.

“Until they show me they are serious about diversity, there’s no reason for me to meet with them,” Fudge said.

And Fudge isn’t alone. Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic lawmakers, aides and strategists detailed months of frustration and unanswered questions about Bustos’ efforts to retain staffers of color in top positions, boost Latino voter outreach and hire firms run by people of color. They said Bustos was tactless when challenged by lawmakers of color.

“The overall plan for Latino outreach seems to be some 1980s playbook, which doesn’t work anymore,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said.

So it’s not about winning, it seems, it’s about winning with the right color of people on staff that’s what’s important. As if one person could perform the job as well as the next one, so get the chocolate box right. This is some amazing bean-counting, focused less on actual winningm which would mean more black and Latino seats in Congress, than it is on the meta-process, on how the winning is done. This is how far-left splinter groups, turning inward on themselves, behave. Far-left communist groups always spew their biggest rage on internal dissenters, which is one reason why they never get anywhere in politics, they are always focused very intensely upon themselves. As I have argued earlier, the Democratic Party is becoming DSA-ified, and apparently, the phenomenon is extending well beyond DSA catspaw Ocasio-Cortez. Even the Democratic consultants on the outside are growing angry, yelling racism, too.

And it’s not all that surprising. Grandstanding about Getting Trump has turned out to be a fast road to nowhere with voters. Democrats have wasted their two years in office, spending so much time thwarting President Trump’s reasonable requests on border security as well as promoting the now-collapsed Russian collusion narrative that they have not gotten around to passing much legislation, certainly nothing they can brag about. They haven’t even bothered to secure goodies for their districts, a Democrat speciality. In the absence of any record they can point to with pride, the donor money has dried up, diminishing the party further. All of that acts to reduce their prospects for more of this nonsense in the coming election.  Now they’re busying themselves with accusations of racism within their own group, sending a message to the voters that all they are interested in is looking at themselves. They’re naval gazing, except by color. And they’re getting pretty public, just as the Ocasio-Cortez – Pelosi fight got real public.

What’s more, Fudge is not the lightweight born-yesterday flash in the pan that Ocasio-Cortez is, she’s a substantial established black congrresswoman who’s often called ‘respected’ in the press. For Pelosi and her DCCC to have Fudge on their backs is a real problem, probably a bigger one than the fringy freshman squad. 

And for grizzled old Grijalva to be calling the Democratic playbook something out of the 1980s is pretty damning, too. It highlights again that Democrats are out of ideas.

For Republicans, it’s all good. The infighting is a signal that the path is clear toward retaking the House in 2020. A rival party that hates itself that badly is a party that offers nothing to voters. It’s time to throw them out. 

Image credit: Tim Evanson, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

Democrats are turning on each other. Out of money, out of ideas, zero accomplishments, and with no goodies to dispense, they are now moving into a full-blown hatefest against one other. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her squad, it turns out, were just the least of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s problems.

Here’s the dumpster fire going on with angry black and Latino representatives effectively accusing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the group charged with holding the House for the Democrats, of racism, according to Politico:

Senior Hispanic and black members of Congress have privately clashed with Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) over her personnel decisions, what they say are tone-deaf comments on race and whether she’s lived up to the promises she made during the campaign to win the chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

“There is not one person of color — black or brown, that I’m aware of — at any position of authority or decision-making in the DCCC,” said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “It is shocking, it is shocking, and something needs to be done about it.”

Bustos sought a meeting with Fudge, and Fudge said no.

“Until they show me they are serious about diversity, there’s no reason for me to meet with them,” Fudge said.

And Fudge isn’t alone. Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic lawmakers, aides and strategists detailed months of frustration and unanswered questions about Bustos’ efforts to retain staffers of color in top positions, boost Latino voter outreach and hire firms run by people of color. They said Bustos was tactless when challenged by lawmakers of color.

“The overall plan for Latino outreach seems to be some 1980s playbook, which doesn’t work anymore,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said.

So it’s not about winning, it seems, it’s about winning with the right color of people on staff that’s what’s important. As if one person could perform the job as well as the next one, so get the chocolate box right. This is some amazing bean-counting, focused less on actual winningm which would mean more black and Latino seats in Congress, than it is on the meta-process, on how the winning is done. This is how far-left splinter groups, turning inward on themselves, behave. Far-left communist groups always spew their biggest rage on internal dissenters, which is one reason why they never get anywhere in politics, they are always focused very intensely upon themselves. As I have argued earlier, the Democratic Party is becoming DSA-ified, and apparently, the phenomenon is extending well beyond DSA catspaw Ocasio-Cortez. Even the Democratic consultants on the outside are growing angry, yelling racism, too.

And it’s not all that surprising. Grandstanding about Getting Trump has turned out to be a fast road to nowhere with voters. Democrats have wasted their two years in office, spending so much time thwarting President Trump’s reasonable requests on border security as well as promoting the now-collapsed Russian collusion narrative that they have not gotten around to passing much legislation, certainly nothing they can brag about. They haven’t even bothered to secure goodies for their districts, a Democrat speciality. In the absence of any record they can point to with pride, the donor money has dried up, diminishing the party further. All of that acts to reduce their prospects for more of this nonsense in the coming election.  Now they’re busying themselves with accusations of racism within their own group, sending a message to the voters that all they are interested in is looking at themselves. They’re naval gazing, except by color. And they’re getting pretty public, just as the Ocasio-Cortez – Pelosi fight got real public.

What’s more, Fudge is not the lightweight born-yesterday flash in the pan that Ocasio-Cortez is, she’s a substantial established black congrresswoman who’s often called ‘respected’ in the press. For Pelosi and her DCCC to have Fudge on their backs is a real problem, probably a bigger one than the fringy freshman squad. 

And for grizzled old Grijalva to be calling the Democratic playbook something out of the 1980s is pretty damning, too. It highlights again that Democrats are out of ideas.

For Republicans, it’s all good. The infighting is a signal that the path is clear toward retaking the House in 2020. A rival party that hates itself that badly is a party that offers nothing to voters. It’s time to throw them out. 

Image credit: Tim Evanson, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

President Donald Trump expressed his disappointment with Democrats on Friday for continuing to push the idea of impeachment proceedings, suggesting that the House could investigate former President Barack Obama instead.

“We want to find out what happened with the last Democrat president, let’s look into Obama the way that they’ve looked at me from Day One, they’ve looked into everything that we’ve done,” he said. “They could look into the book deal that President Obama made.”

The president spoke about the possible investigation with reporters at the White House after a signing agreement with Guatemala.

Obama and his wife Michelle famously signed a book deal estimated at $65 million in 2017.

Trump appeared to use the example of the book deal to show that Republicans never took their presidential investigations as far as Democrats do in Congress.

He noted that Republicans were “gentlemen and women” for not harassing Obama and Clinton with subpoenas when they were in the majority, unlike Democrats.

Trump predicted that Republicans would probably take back majorities in the House and keep the Senate in 2020 and the presidency.

He noted that the ongoing march toward impeachment was “politics” in order to rally their base in 2020.

“It’s a disgrace that they’re doing it, they’re doing it for political reasons and most of them, many of them are admitting that it’s politics,” he said.

A majority of Americans believe that the Pledge of Allegiance should be recited in school classrooms, but the number who support it is down from the 77 percent who felt that way in 2008, with 61 percent in favor today, a Rasmussen Reports poll shows.

Twenty-eight percent oppose children saying the Pledge of Allegiance every school day, and 11 percent were undecided in the poll of 1,000 Americans aked on July 17-18 online and by telephone.

The margin of sampling error in the poll is plus or minus three percentage points.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy, according to an Independence Hall Association website. It was originally published in The Youth’s Companion on September 8, 1892.

It originally said, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

In 1923, the words “flag of the United States of America” were added. The revised pledge read: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Congress to add the words “under God,” creating the 31-word pledge said today: ”I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Section 4 of the United States Flag Code states that the pledge “should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform men should remove any non-religious headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute.”

According to the American Legion website: “The Flag Code specifies that any future changes to the pledge would have to be with the consent of the president.”

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