We Don't Have To Warn You About MAGAts— We Shouldn't Have To Warn You About New Dems And Blue Dogs

Blue Dogs Golden and Perez

Sometimes the NY Times really can be a joke. Yesterday, they published a piece by Lisa Friedman, Why 35 House Democrats Joined Republicans Against a Major Climate Policy, that seems to have intentionally avoided 4 little words: “New Dems” and “Blue Dogs.” Of the 35 conservative-leaning Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP for pollution and emphysema, 32 are members of the corporately financed New Dems and/or Blue Dogs. Many of them are the Democrats who most frequently work with Republicans against progressive legislation, congressional shitstains like Jared Golden (ME), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA), Henry Cuellar (TX), Don Davis (NC), Jared Moskowitz (FL), Susie Lee (NV), Vicente Gonzalez (TX), Kristen Rivet (MI), Laura Gillen (NY), Sanford Bishop (GA)… 

“Some,” wrote Friedman, “wonder whether that unity is starting to fray in the face of intense lobbying and worries about rising prices amid Trump’s trade wars. ‘It was a big disappointment,’ said Margo Oge, who served as the top regulator of vehicle emissions at the Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. California’s plan would ‘save money, put the country in position to fight climate change and allow us to compete in the global marketplace,’ Oge said, nodding to the fact that electric vehicles are cheaper to operate and maintain over the long run than gas-powered cars. Transportation is the biggest source of global warming pollution in the United States, contributing about 29 percent of the country’s total carbon emissions. California’s ban, which had been adopted by 11 other states, was expected to help shift the country toward cleaner electric vehicles.”

Afraid to call them conservatives, Friedman wrote that “the 35 Democrats who voted to fast-track a repeal of that waiver were a mix: moderates from red and purple states as well as those representing blue states.”  Few are moderates; most are conservatives— not fascists, mostly not MAGAts (although Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez are)— but classical economic conservatives… or playing that role because of how they interpret their districts’ voters… Representative Laura Gillen, whose New York district includes Nassau County, said she worried that restrictions in the marketplace would make gas-powered vehicles more expensive. ‘My constituents have seen their 401(k)s wiped out with this trade war and what’s going on in the market,’ said Gillen, who voted against the California ban, referring to retirement savings plans. ‘The last thing they need is something to add to their financial burdens. I want to reduce emissions, I care about the environment,’ she said, adding, ‘I want to incentivize people to adopt and embrace clean energy. Putting in unworkable mandates that might actually increase costs is not the way to do it.’”

Gillen, a freshman right-wing, gutless New Dem, who was only elected to Congress because the GOP incumbent was so uniquely unfit for office in a strongly blue district, is the worst freshmen elected last year, with a Progressive Punch crucial vote score of 74.0 (and an “F” grade). She has the 200th “best” voting record of 213 House Dems, the lowest score of any freshman. The next two worst freshmen are corrupt Blue Dog Adam Gray (CA) and New Dem April McClain-Delaney (MD), tied for the 181st slot with 78.0 scores.

In a report for the Boston Globe yesterday, Bernie Sanders’ message used to divide Democrats; now, on an anti-Trump rally tour, it’s galvanizing them,  Sam Brodey wrote that Bernie’s “primary prescription to cure what ails the party hasn’t changed since his first bid for president in 2016. ‘Our job right now,’ he said, ‘is to demand and make certain that the agenda of the Democratic Party is the agenda of the working class.’” That is very much not what members like Laura Gollen, Adam Gray, April McClain-Delaney and Congress’ other New Dems and Blue Dogs have the slightest interest in. In fact, when it comes to economics, the New Dems and Blue Dogs are often closer to conservative Republican positions than they are to Bernie’s, whose “diatribes against the power of billionaires feel far more real to many more people outside his core base of supporters.”

Reporting from a recent rallies in Republican-held swing districts in Pennsylvania, Brodey wrote that “The reasons for coming to the Bethlehem rally were partly Bernie, partly the fact that he’s doing the oligarchy and bringing this to the forefront, and partly just to get out here and be another person saying, ‘hey, this is wrong.’ There are layers of irony to Sanders emerging as the primary instigator of the anti-Trump resistance at this early stage. While the socialist senator has long opposed Trump’s hard-right views, he has never jockeyed to prove his resistance bonafides like others on the left. And some of his sharpest critiques have been directed toward a Democratic Party he believes is fecklessly beholden to corporations and the rich. Then there’s the fact that for all the crowds Sanders is drawing, and the new fans he may be converting, the senator’s winding political career is nearing its close. At 83 years old, he is considered highly unlikely to seek the presidency a third time in 2028. He has said his current Senate term, which runs through 2030, will probably be his last. But this moment, in which soul-searching Democrats are hungry to have their leadership vacuum filled, might be Sanders’ last, best opportunity to move forward his vision of sweeping left-wing change, which he sees as transcending this moment altogether.”

“We must do everything we can to defeat Trumpism, but that is not enough,” Sanders said in Bethlehem. “We are the richest country in the history of the world. And there is no reason why every man, woman, and child in this country does not have a decent standard of living.”

… The senator’s branding decision has attracted some criticism within the party: Senator Elissa Slotkin, of Michigan [the most right-wing Democrat in the Senate, the new Kyrsten Sinema], argued in April the term “oligarchy” was too esoteric a concept and didn’t resonate with most people. Sanders fired back on NBC that the “American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are.”

But Sanders’ advantage, currently, is the bully pulpit that comes with being one of the only high-profile figures on the left making the case against Trump in public, campaign-style settings. Before heading to Pennsylvania, Sanders drew more than 250,000 people at his rallies, according to his team, which added that two-thirds of those who signed up to attend were new to his email list.

In Harrisburg on Friday, Sanders drew a solid, but not overwhelming crowd that filled a warehouse-like venue on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex. In Bethlehem the next day, he packed the stands of the basketball arena at Lehigh University with 5,000 attendees, according to Sanders’ team. (They did not disclose attendance figures for the Harrisburg rally.)

At both stops, Sanders was introduced by Representative Chris Deluzio, a progressive who has twice won a battleground district outside Pittsburgh. In Harrisburg, Deluzio told reporters after the rally it was clear “people are mad about what our government’s done, what’s happening in Washington with the Trump administration.”

“And that anger might not just be new anger, right?” Deluzio said. “It might be that for a long time, you worked in a factory, you lived in a town where a factory job supported you, you’ve seen decades of hollowing out of your community. We should be mad about that. The villains aren’t just Donald Trump, who’s doing a lot to destroy our country right now.”

Sanders and his allies are hoping to channel this anger toward a more immediate political goal: winning back Congress. While he has gone to deep blue areas, including Los Angeles, and deep red areas such as Boise, Idaho, Sanders has prioritized Republican-held congressional districts that Democrats are hoping to flip in the 2026 midterms.

The rallies over the weekend targeted two of the GOP’s most vulnerable incumbents: Representative Scott Perry, who represents the Harrisburg area, and Representative Ryan Mackenzie, who represents the Lehigh Valley. Sanders warned if the two support the sweeping GOP bill taking shape in Congress— which seeks to pair major tax cut extensions with deep spending cuts to social services— they would be defeated next November.

… Characteristically, however, Sanders called out the Democratic Party, with which he has had an uneasy relationship over time even though as an independent he caucuses with Senate Democrats. He castigated the party for being too aligned with moneyed interests, for not eschewing corporate campaign spending more widely, and for turning a blind eye to income inequality. Those arguments mirrored the mood among some attendees, who expressed frustration the Democratic Party is not pushing back harder against Trump in Washington both on strategy and substance.

The question for Sanders is whether he can convert the many who came to see him out of anger toward Trump or frustration with Democrats, to left-wing populism. Despite being open to him, Ebersole, the Lancaster retiree, still said she would be reluctant to back Sanders or a Sanders-style candidate in the future.

But others now wish they’d backed Sanders when they had the chance. As attendees filed out of a warehouse-like venue where Sanders held his rally on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, Tracy Ripani, a teacher from Baltimore County, Maryland, reflected on the 2016 Democratic primary, when felt Sanders was “too radical” for her.

“But his vision of what he saw coming is now reality. I felt like I should have listened to him more before,” Ripani said. “I wish he was 40 years younger.”

Well, AOC is.