Collusion Conclusions

by Matt Bors

The Democratic Party’s Anti-Bernie Elites Have a Huge Stake in Blaming Russia

I don't necessarily believe the entire premise of this article but there are many bitter Democrats that do.

(Photo: DonkeyHotey/flickr/cc)

Common Dreams
by Norman Solomon


After Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss nearly six months ago, her most powerful Democratic allies feared losing control of the party. Efforts to lip-synch economic populism while remaining closely tied to Wall Street had led to a catastrophic defeat. In the aftermath, the party’s progressive base—personified by Bernie Sanders—was in position to start flipping over the corporate game board.

Aligned with Clinton, the elites of the Democratic Party needed to change the subject. Clear assessments of the national ticket’s failures were hazardous to the status quo within the party. So were the groundswells of opposition to unfair economic privilege. So were the grassroots pressures for the party to become a genuine force for challenging big banks, Wall Street and overall corporate power.

In short, the Democratic Party’s anti-Bernie establishment needed to reframe the discourse in a hurry. And—in tandem with mass media—it did.

The reframing could be summed up in two words: Blame Russia.

By early winter, the public discourse was going sideways—much to the benefit of party elites. The meme of blaming Russia and Vladimir Putin for the election of Donald Trump effectively functioned to let the Wall Street-friendly leadership of the national Democratic Party off the hook. Meanwhile, serious attempts to focus on the ways that wounds to democracy in the United States have been self-inflicted—whether via the campaign finance system or the purging of minorities from voter rolls or any number of other systemic injustices—were largely set aside.

"Rather than just calling for what’s needed—a truly independent investigation into allegations that the Russian government interfered with the U.S. election—the party line became hyperbolic and unmoored from the available evidence."

Fading from scrutiny was the establishment that continued to dominate the Democratic Party’s superstructure. At the same time, its devotion to economic elites was undiminished. As Bernie told a reporter on the last day of February: “Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.”

Amid great luxury and looming catastrophe, the party’s current hierarchy has invested enormous political capital in depicting Vladimir Putin as an unmitigated arch villain. Relevant history was irrelevant, to be ignored or denied.

With dutiful conformity from most Democrats in Congress, the party elites doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on the emphatic claim that Moscow is the capital of, by any other name, an evil empire. Rather than just calling for what’s needed—a truly independent investigation into allegations that the Russian government interfered with the U.S. election—the party line became hyperbolic and unmoored from the available evidence.

Given their vehement political investment in demonizing Russia’s President Putin, Democratic leaders are oriented to seeing the potential of detente with Russia as counterproductive in terms of their electoral strategy for 2018 and 2020. It’s a calculus that boosts the risks of nuclear annihilation, given the very real dangers of escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow.


Along the way, top party officials seem bent on returning to a kind of pre-Bernie-campaign doldrums. The new chair of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, can't bring himself to say that the power of Wall Street is antithetical to the interests of working people. That reality came to painful light this week during a live appearance on national television.

During a 10-minute joint interview along with Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night, Perez was a font of exactly the kind of trite empty slogans and worn-out platitudes that oiled the engines of the dismal Clinton campaign.

While Sanders was forthright, Perez was evasive. While Sanders talked about systemic injustice, Perez fixated on Trump. While Sanders pointed to a way forward for realistic and far-reaching progressive change, Perez hung onto a rhetorical formula that expressed support for victims of the economic order without acknowledging the existence of victimizers.

"The politically motivated missile attack on Syria showed just how dangerous it is to keep Russia-baiting Trump, giving him political incentive to prove how tough he is on Russia after all."

In an incisive article published by The Nation magazine, Robert Borosage wrote last week: “For all the urgent pleas for unity in the face of Trump, the party establishment has always made it clear that they mean unity under their banner. That’s why they mobilized to keep the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Keith Ellison, from becoming head of the DNC. It’s why the knives are still out for Sanders and those who supported him.”

While Bernie is hardly a reliable opponent of U.S. war policies, he is significantly more critical of military intervention than the Democratic Party leaders who often champion it. Borosage noted that the party establishment is locked into militaristic orthodoxies that favor continuing to inflict the kind of disasters that the United States has brought to Iraq, Libya and other countries: “Democrats are in the midst of a major struggle to decide what they stand for and who they represent. Part of that is the debate over a bipartisan interventionist foreign policy that has so abjectly failed.”

For the Democratic Party’s most hawkish wing—dominant from the top down and allied with Clinton’s de facto neocon approach to foreign policy—the U.S. government’s April 6 cruise missile attack on a Syrian airfield was an indication of real leverage for more war. That attack on a close ally of Russia showed that incessant Russia-baiting of Trump can get gratifying military results for the Democratic elites who are undaunted in their advocacy of regime change in Syria and elsewhere.

The politically motivated missile attack on Syria showed just how dangerous it is to keep Russia-baiting Trump, giving him political incentive to prove how tough he is on Russia after all. What’s at stake includes the imperative of preventing a military clash between the world’s two nuclear superpowers. But the corporate hawks at the top of the national Democratic Party have other priorities.

GOP Oversight

By Mike Luckovich AJC.

President Obama's Weekly Address 9/27/14: America is Leading the World

WASHINGTON, DC -- In this week’s address, the President reiterated the forceful and optimistic message of American leadership that he delivered in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week. America is leading the world against the most pressing challenges, including the fight to degrade and destroy ISIL, the effort to stop the Ebola epidemic, and the movement to confront the threat from climate change. The world looks to America and its commitment to freedom in the face of uncertainly, and as the President said, it will continue to do so for generations to come.

What We Still Don't Know About Fracking

The following is from Congressman Rush Holt's newsletter:

Fracking – short for “hydraulic fracturing” – is a drilling process that involves shattering the ground with a millions of gallons of water, sand, and a mix of poorly understood chemicals. Those chemicals leach into the soil, into the air, and into the water we drink.

Most people take for granted that, given the large-scale expansion of fracking in recent years, the process must have passed some kind of government and scientific muster. But in truth, the headlong rush into fracking has not been matched by improvements in our understanding of the science. In fact, an amendment that I strongly opposed was added to a Bush-era energy law exempting the process of hydraulic fracturing from compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Indeed, we do not even know how much methane (the principle component of natural gas) leaks into the atmosphere through the fracking process. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. It is suspected that the leakage may be large enough to make gas-fueled power generation almost as harmful to the climate as coal-fired generation. We know that micro-earthquakes have increased, apparently as a result of hydraulic fracturing. And we know that individual people have found toxic chemicals in their land, their water, their air, and even their blood. Their stories are told in a new report,Shalefield Stories, released by Environment New Jersey earlier this week.

These stories are anecdotal, and further careful research is necessary to understand the full effects of fracking. But these anecdotes are deeply concerning. The amusing old saying says, “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is ‘data,’” and the anecdotes are piling up. I have called for a fracking moratorium in our region until we better understand fracking’s effect on our environment and our health.

Opportunity Closing to Enroll for Affordable Health Care

The new health care reform law created HealthCare.gov, a one-stop portal to compare and purchase quality health insurance policies at competitive rates for those who don’t have insurance through other means. In order to obtain health insurance coverage for the year 2014 through HealthCare.gov, you must enroll by Monday, March 31.

Thousands of New Jerseyans have already successfully applied for and selected coverage through the new website, including me.  HealthCare.gov also will help you learn if you are eligible for Medicaid or cost-sharing assistance to help cover the cost of your health care premiums. Many people have said to me, after using the website, they were surprised to learn that they are eligible for assistance paying their premiums. More information on health care reform is available on my website, or you can call 1-800-318-2596 for help enrolling in a health care plan.

Please keep in mind that, beginning this year, nearly every American is required to have health care coverage, with a few exceptions. If you do not have health insurance by March 31, you may have to pay a penalty.

We Cannot Stand By

Earlier this week, a CNN camera crew reported evidence that Russian troops are literally digging in on the Crimean peninsula, installing minefields along the new, illegal border they have created with Ukraine. The world community cannot stand by in the face of this unprovoked Russian invasion of another sovereign nation, which clearly violates international law.

I joined the House this week in passing a resolution calling upon the Obama administration to respond by boycotting the upcoming G8 summit and by working with our partners to expel Russia from the G8. The resolution further calls on the new Ukrainian government to implement measures to end political corruption, respect the human rights and civil liberties of ethnic minorities in Ukraine, and more. Although the standing of the U.S. to condemn countries for invading others has weakened in the past decade, much of the world also sees Russia’s action in Ukraine as unacceptable.

Sincerely,

Rush Holt
Member of Congress

President Obama's Weekly Address 9/14/13: Pursuing a Diplomatic Solution in Syria

WASHINGTON, DC—In his weekly address, President Obama followed up on his speech to the nation on Tuesday and said there is the possibility for a diplomatic solution in Syria, partially because of the credible threat of U.S. military force. Russia has joined the international community in pushing Syria to give up its chemical weapons—which were used to kill more than 1,000 people on August 21 —and the U.S. will take steps to ensure this is not a stalling tactic. We will also maintain our military posture in the region and remain prepared to act if diplomacy fails. This allows us to achieve our goal of deterring the Syrian regime from using chemical weapons, degrade their ability to use them, and make it clear to the world that we won’t tolerate their use, in order to preserve a world free from the fear of chemical weapons for our children.

President Obama's Weekly Adress 11/20/10: New START Treaty "Fundamental" to Security

The President says ratifying the New START, a pivotal treaty with Russia on nuclear weapons, must happen this year. He explains that failure to ratify the treaty this year would not only mean losing our nuclear inspectors in Russia, but also undermine the international coalition pressuring Iran, put at risk the transit routes used to equip our troops in Afghanistan, and undo decades American leadership and bipartisanship on nuclear security.

President Obama's Weekly Address: 4/4/09

The President discusses the breadth and depth of the global challenges we face, as well as our potential to address them through renewed international alliances. This week's address was filmed aboard Air Force 1 amidst vital diplomatic stops at the G-20 Summit, a NATO summit, and bilateral meetings

Today in History for December 29th

Noblemen in Russia murder Gregory Rasputin; Wounded Knee massacre takes place; Texas joins the United States as the 28th state; Dissident playwright Vaclav Havel is elected president of Czechoslovakia; First YMCA opens in Boston. (Dec. 29)