Rep. John Delaney (D-Doofus)
Holy crap
this guy is a doofus.
Rep. John Delaney (Md.), a centrist House Democrat, on Friday warned that voices on the left have "hijacked" his party’s message.
Oh my gosh, the party of the left has been hijacked by the left? About time! Let's go directly
to the source and see what has this guy all riled up.
With Washington already broken, the last thing we need is a left-wing version of the tea party. But I am worried about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party.
Yeah, the last thing Democrats need is the sort of activism energy that has given Republicans their biggest House majority in nearly a century and control of the Senate. That would be horrible, you know, getting to run shit.
Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats.
That stuff sounds awesome! I thought this guy was criticizing his own party.
Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.
Oops, nevermind. Apparently, shipping jobs overseas, starving seniors, and letting the bank barons get off scot-free for destroying the world economy is a "positive and bold agenda" that improves people's lives. Who knew? More below the fold.
[I]nstead of being used to voice an agenda that can bring the country together, the party microphone has been hijacked by people more interested in scoring points than in solving problems.
Hmm, what happened to the last guy who spent years trying to "bring the country together"? I can't seem to remember. ...
I've got a better idea. There are more of us than there are of them. Motivate our people to vote, and fuck the other side. Ironically, they end up benefitting even MORE from our policies than our own people. Who are the biggest beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act? Hint, they live in places like Kentucky and don't vote Blue.
They propose expanding Social Security rather than prioritizing serious efforts to preserve the program — even though it will be unable to provide full benefits as soon as 2032, the Congressional Budget Office has made clear.
If only there was a way to expand Social Security benefits and have it solvent past this horribly imminent deadline in 17 years. ... Oh wait, there is! Eliminate the cap on payroll taxes. Problem solved.
The only way a large-scale expansion could work is by allocating new revenue away from needed investments in the next generation or by shifting the financial burden to workers or our children.
Or ... there's that other thing about the cap on payroll taxes. You know, when you write "only way," it's pretty stupid to ignore the biggest solution people are advocating to pay for such an expansion.
Likewise, as if the global economy will wait for us, protectionists demonize President Obama’s unfinished Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. A fair trade deal is a crucial step in bolstering the U.S. manufacturing renaissance, boosting U.S. exports and growing our economy.
Yeah! If history has taught us anything, it's that trade deals have totally bolstered US manufacturing capacity and grown our economy, right?
Unfortunately, Democratic recalcitrance is increasing the chance that the deal could be done instead by a Republican president.
There's not a single voter who is going to vote for Jeb Bush next November because Democrats stood in the way of this trade deal. Not a one. On the other hand, there are many Democrats who will lose if they sell out their base in order to please corporatist interests. You want our voters to vote for us? You show them you are fighting for them.
Lastly, some in our party continue to engage in time-consuming rhetoric attacking banks that has little chance of producing more financial reform and distracts from far more consequential areas of economic risk, such as climate change, chronic underinvestment in the next generation and our broken immigration and housing finance systems.
Run-on sentence alert! I'll try to unpack: if you try to hold banks accountable for their (continued) excesses, nothing will happen with immigration and climate change. You see, those issues are intractably linked! We can't chew and walk at the same time, and Republicans are just begging us to do all sorts of great things but we've been putting them off because we just can't get over our obsession with bankers.
Let me see if I can employ this sort of "logic" myself: If only some Democrats like John Delaney would stop trying to defend asshole corrupt bankers, then we'd be able to embrace Republicans in a shared moment of common purpose and enact great progressive stuff and unicorns would shit rainbows and the Cubs would win a World Series! It's funny because it's true.
The good thing is that Delaney is right—his brand of "Democrat" is increasingly an anachronism in the party. The left is steadily retaking its party from the corporatists who controlled it for far too long, and they are left a fringe screaming in frustration from the sidelines. You can bet he'll be voting for Rep. Chris Van Hollen in his party's Senate primary next year (if he doesn't decide to run himself, a real possibility). So there's no better way to send this guy a "fuck you" than to give to Rep. Donna Edwards' Senate campaign. I know I was just motivated to do so again.