Last night, after the news broke that longtime corporate shill Bakari Sellers is leading an effort of Zionist businessmen to destroy Rashida Tlaib's career, Seattle Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal told me that she's known Rashida for more than 2 decades, after first meeting her "when she was a young organizer in the days after September 11, 2001. Rashida fights incredibly hard every single day for her constituents. She led the charge on ensuring that Congress allocated money to get lead out of water, not only for her constituents but across the country. She was a key CPC member in standing up for stimulus checks in the American Rescue Plan so her constituents would have money in their pockets. She has helped move the national conversation substantially on what justice looks like in her grandmother’s home of Palestine, and she is a valued member of the Progressive Caucus Executive Board. We need Rashida," she emphasized, "back in Congress."
And the Democratic Party congressional establishment? No comment so far from Pelosi and Hoyer, who say-- when caught backing reactionary anti-working class and anti-Choice and pro-NRA members-- that they always support incumbents... let alone from anti-progressive fanatics Hakeem Jeffries and Bakari Sellers mentor Jim Clyburn, who are rumored to be behind the effort to erase Tlaib.
I guess craven, spineless congressmen like Jeffries and Clyburn-- who learned well the lesson AIPAC taught African-American Democrats by going into solid Black districts in Georgia and Alabama and ruthlessly destroying the political careers of Cynthia McKinney and Earl Hilliard for having the temerity of not bowing down to Israel-- know exactly what master they serve. Besides, Jeffries and Clyburn, like most careerist politicians, are well known to prefer honey over vinegar.
And Biden? He was quick to jump to the defense of reactionary Blue Dog Kurt Schrader, arguably the Democrat second closest-- after Josh Gottheimer-- to being a Republican of any House Dem. But Rashida? Crickets so far.
But this isn't just a Democratic Party thing. The Republican establishment tolerates a lot from its members-- overt Naziism, treason, corruption-- but there is a line that cannot be crossed. Madison Cawthorn crossed it: blowing the whistle on McCarthy ally Patrick McHenry for inviting him to a GOP coke-fueled orgy. So McCarthy moved to cancel him. Mission seems, at least tentatively accomplished. A garden variety right-wing Republican, state Senate Chuck Edwards defeated Cawthorn with the help of $1,888,373 in Republican Party independent expenditures slamming Cawthorn and boosting the innocuous Edwards. $1,732,828 was spent by Republican Senator Thom Tillis' Grow NC Strong SuperPAC-- which hides where they got their money-- but it is a universally acknowledged truth in DC that McCarthy was behind the effort.
Yesterday, in his Washington Post column, Paul Kane noted that some far right members are being replaced by traditional conservatives. I'm told that Post columnists are strictly discouraged from using the word "fascist" to describe Republican members of Congress but that "far right" is approved as a stand-in. Kane mostly talked about Texas crackpot-- and insurrectionist fascist-- Louie Gohmert being replaced by Smith County judge Nathaniel Moran, a garden variety evangelical conservative-- "I really can be a true conservative and a thoughtful policymaker," he told Kane-- but that was because Gohmert, misjudging his state's devotion to outright fascism, ran for Attorney General and came in a distant 4th in the GOP primary, with less than 17% of the vote, having been abandoned by Trump, who endorsed crooked incumbent Ken Paxton.
"Democrats," wrote Kane, "have had their share of left-wing victors who caused trouble for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi these past four years, but Republicans have ended up with far more rabble-rousers-- and rule-breakers, norm-crushers and white-supremacy-embracers-- who caused endless headaches the past decade for two GOP speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, and now Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Two years ago Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) defeated a brain surgeon in a runoff to claim the seat of a retiring 10-year veteran who devoted his final two years in office to a bipartisan effort to make Congress function better. Greene, who easily beat several GOP primary challengers this week, has suggested she will issue a set of demands before voting for McCarthy for speaker if Republicans win the majority. Gohmert is one of 16 House Republicans who decided to retire or seek a different office, almost all from safe GOP seats. So these Republican primaries will help determine whether Greene ends up with more agitator allies or if their numbers will be small enough that GOP leaders can avoid kowtowing to their purity demands."
Cawthorn was firmly in the Gang Greene. So was Mo Brooks (R-AL) but the two Republicans in the runoff to replace him are both fascists, even if Case Wardynski is slightly more fascistic than Dale Strong. In Georgia, where sociopath Jody Hice lost his run for Secretary of State, his red district will also host a runoff between two fascists, Trump-endorsed Vernon Jones, who calls himself "the Black Donald Trump," and Mike Collins the son of a former congressman, who is competing with Jones to be the most extreme. Both claim they will vote against McCarthy's bid for the speakership.
Various SuperPACS, more often than not using money from Republican-oriented donors-- and allied with Democratic establishment leaders, primarily Jeffries and Clyburn, but also Pelosi and Hoyer, right-of-center corporate whores Tony Cárdenas (BoldPAC's incredibly corrupt chairman) and Pete Aguilar (Inland Empire sleaze ball coke freak, vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus and part of Jeffries' anti-progressive crew)-- have been mostly gunning for candidates in open seats, like Erica Smith and Nida Allam in North Carolina and Cristina Garcia (CA), but are now going on the offensive against progressive incumbents-- Marie Newman (IL), Rashida Tlaib (MI), and Andy Levin (MI). While we're waiting for Biden or Pelosi to say something about this, please let me point out that you can help Newman, Tlaib and Levin-- all effective champions of working class interests-- here on the Act Blue page for the tiny handful of incumbents endorsed for reelection by Blue America.