RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/22/democratic-establishment-wont-stand-partys-a

Democratic leaders seem to have surmised that to keep together a party splitting both generationally and ideologically, they had to either court the radicals or risk early retirement.

Perhaps the most significant long-term development taking place in the Democratic Party is its surrender to the party’s Blame America First wing. One of many indications of this is House Democratic leadership’s ardent defense of its virulently anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and fundamentally anti-American and anti-Western colleagues.

The Democrat establishment’s cave began when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chastised Rep. Ilhan Omar for her anti-Semitic comments, only to then cravenly acquiesce to party progressives by passing a House resolution that refused to condemn Omar by name, and refused to solely condemn Omar’s offending anti-Semitic rhetoric. It accelerated with the party’s attack on critics of Omar’s comments seemingly trivializing the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Then, in the wake of Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s feckless, supportive responses for Rep. Rashida Tlaib following the firestorm she created with her historically illiterate, Hamas-ian hagiographyof Israel’s founding, the Holocaust, and the Arabs’ role in relation to both, the cave to the Blame America Firsters appears to be complete.

The Democrat Old Guard will no longer engage in even muted criticism of its Party’s provocative Young Turks. Rather, it will wholeheartedly defend the provocateurs and vociferously condemn their condemners

The pertinent question few are asking is, “Why?” Assuming the Democratic leadership is driven above all else by power, I suggest three primary reasons for this shameful shift.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/democrats-running-for-president-crowded-field/

Twenty or so are going to end this presidential-election cycle deeply disappointed.

Every presidential primary ends with one winner and a lot of losers. Some might argue that one or two once-little-known candidates who overperform low expectations get to enjoy a form of moral victory. (Ben Carson and Rick Perry might be happy how the 2016 cycle ended, with both taking roles in Trump’s cabinet. Bernie Sanders might be, too.) But running for president and flopping is a deep disappointment, and while the occasional figure can emerge from a failed bid to move on to different victories — Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole became senators, Jerry Brown became governor again, Howard Dean became chair of the Democratic National Committee — a lot of failed presidential candidates fade away into the private sector and obscurity beyond occasional cable-news appearances: Bill Bradley, Tommy Thompson, Wesley Clark, Dick Gephardt, Alan Keyes, Bob Graham, Bill Richardson, Evan Bayh, Michele Bachmann.

The 2020 Democratic primary is going to end with about 23 campaigns falling short of actual victory and any moral victories. Perhaps two candidates will end up in a unity ticket, and perhaps one or two will have set themselves up for another run for another office someday. But the coming year will bring a lot of anticlimax, frustration, and disillusionment for a lot of once-promising figures in the party.

Here are the 24 Democratic presidential candidates, more or less in order of their position, although outside the top four or five, the ranking barely matters.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/21/kamalas-contradictions/

Kamala Harris, the junior U.S. senator from California who is battling among some two-dozen other candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, didn’t have much of a career before 1994. That was the year she became the new “steady” of California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a man who is a full 30 years her senior. In a process of poontronage, Brown appointed Harris to lucrative sinecures in state government and raised money for her successful run for San Francisco district attorney.

Harris went on to win election as state attorney general in 2010, even though the Sacramento Bee endorsed her Republican rival, Steve Cooley. (So much for the power of endorsements!) In 2016, Brown urged former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to drop out of the U.S. Senate race, and his former steady went on to win the November election handily. Harris now wants to be president, but she is hardly the only Willie Brown understudy on the rise.

In 1995, a year after he met Harris, Brown encountered fundraiser Carolyn Carpeneti, an elegant blond of 32, and the two became romantically involved. In fact, the pair had a daughter in 2001, when Carpeneti was 38 and Brown 67. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted in 2003, “people familiar with her career—political professionals, city officials, her ex-husband—say Carpeneti’s success is rooted in her relationship with Brown.”

Over a five-year period, groups controlled by Brown paid $2.3 million to Carpeneti, recently granted a sweetheart no-bid deal to recruit for California’s online college project. As Dan Morain noted in CALmatters, the person who selected Carpeneti, Heather Hiles, “is connected to San Francisco politics, having overseen communications for Gov. Gavin Newsom while he was running to succeed Brown as mayor of San Francisco in 2003.”