Alan Grayson: Proof that the Democratic Establishment Takes Your Spine before It Sends You Slithering to the Basement

It was always difficult to find Democratic officials who were willing to champion Bernie Sanders, so numerous Berners gravitated to Alan Grayson in February, when he endorsed Sanders based on a poll conducted among his own supporters (who preferred Sanders to Clinton by a 6-to-1 ratio).

Judged against the backdrop of so many establishment Democrats ignoring the will of their constituents and supporting Clinton, Grayson's endorsement of Sanders seemed bold--perhaps even heroic. Just think about that for a moment. A superdelegate takes a poll among his own supporters to see whether they prefer Clinton or Sanders, and when the results come back overwhelmingly for Sanders, we construe the superdelegate's endorsement of Sanders as bold even though it's a textbook example of political expediency.

Grayson didn't base his decision on Clinton's corruption or Sanders' commitment to social, economic, racial, and environmental justice. He took a poll and got behind the candidate that 84% of his supporters preferred.

So it was no shock to me when he exposed himself as a political opportunist in this cringeworthy interview with Democracy Now! after the Orlando nightclub shooting in June:

Grayson's condescension towards Vince Warren of CCRJustice.org becomes palpable when Grayson invokes the "real world" as his justification for championing the Democrats' "no-fly-no-buy" initiative over his own vastly superior call for a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban.

The problem with Grayson's argument is that in the real world, the no-fly-no-buy legislation sponsored by the Democrats would not have prevented Omar Mateen from acquiring the assault weapons he used in his nightclub assault.

Yes, Mateen had once been investigated in connection with vague connections to Homeland Security concerns, but he wasn't under investigation at the time of the massacre.

The bill that would have prevented Mateen's atrocity is actually the one that Grayson himself wrote, a one-sentence request for a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban that was passed in 1994 and resulted in a 65% reduction in events such as the Orlando shooting before being allowed to expire.

Again, I want to let that sink in: The guy who wrote a bill that would have prevented the Orlando shooting stood in front of a camera and championed a different bill that wouldn't have prevented the Orlando shooting as his response to the Orlando shooting. He even went so far as to scold another adult human being (Warren) for pointing out the absurdity of his position.

This is the problem with Democrats. They don't want to stop mass shootings for the sake of stopping mass shootings. They only want to stop mass shootings if doing so allows them to expand the powers of the surveillance state. And when critics call them out for this hypocrisy, their response is to belittle and bully those of us who live in the real world for being unrealistic.

And what did Grayson get for putting the Democrats' bad bill ahead of his own good bill? Was he rewarded for being a good little soldier in the cause of his party?

Nope.

He has now been hung out to dry as old charges of domestic violence are coming out to plague his campaign just as he seeks a high-profile debate with Patrick Murphy, an establishment Democrat who, like Grayson, seeks to win Marco Rubio's seat in the senate.

Do I support Murphy? No.

Do I know what to make of the domestic abuse charges against Grayson? No.

Do I suspect that Grayson's ex-wife was pressured into making her charges by operatives of the Democratic Party? It's possible.

But most importantly, do I care that Grayson (who remains a favorite of Sanders supporters) appears likely to lose his party's nomination to Murphy? No.

I don't see any reason to believe that Grayson was ever committed to progressive values. He appears to have been just another politician who was eager to ride in the wake of Bernie's populism. And if you ever have any doubts about that, just watch the way he speaks to Warren. Grayson is simply another entitled politician who wants to appear dedicated to standing up for the little guy (even as he steps on other people who are actually standing up for the little guy).

But the important lesson for progressives to learn from Grayson is that even the Democrats who make despicable compromises with the party will be run over by the party in the end.

Cenk Uygur Perpetuates the Myth That Democrats Are Somehow Less Corrupt Than Republicans

Two minutes and forty-five seconds into the video linked above, Cenk Uygur explains why the conservatives on the Supreme Court love bribery: because "they [the conservatives] got there through bribery."

Uygur makes an excellent case throughout the video that the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the conviction of Bob McDonnell demonstrates that our government is openly for sale because the highest court in the land is unwilling to consider anything bribery.

But that conclusion somehow becomes ancillary to Uygur's primary contention, which is that this lamentable state of affairs is the fault of deeply corrupt Republican justices appointed by deeply corrupt Republican administrations.

By the end of the video, Uygur is sputtering with rage against conservative Republican corruption. (Watch his apoplectic fit for yourself if you like.)

At no point, however, does Uygur mention that the Supreme Court's decision concerning McDonnell was unanimous.

He doesn't even bother to wonder why the justices appointed by Democratic administrations are every bit as eager to make bribery legal as their Republican colleagues.

So the question TYT viewers need to confront is simple: Is Uygur blind, or is he trying to impose blindness on his viewers?

Is his point in discussing the corruption of the Democratic Party to expose it--or to pretend that it is somehow less treacherous and less pervasive than the corruption of the Republican Party?

Each time he explains his convoluted reasoning behind supporting Clinton out of a fear of Trump, I think he answers that question.

If Hillary Secures the Nomination, the Next Casualty of Regime Change Will Be the Democratic Party

Hillary Clinton has a talent and a propensity for toppling established systems of authority and leaving power vacuums in their place. This usually happens in places far-flung from the average American voter (such as Honduras, Libya, etc.), but the chickens of Clinton’s chickenhawkishness are about to come home to roost for the Democratic Party.

The Democrats can only send one message to the American people by nominating Hillary Clinton: that they would rather preserve the current system of pay-to-play politics than win the presidency.

We all know that’s true, of course. But we also expect our professional politicians to do a better job of concealing their cupidity and corruption. This reasonable expectation of the electorate puts Hillary in a bind, since it’s difficult for one to conceal what one embodies. 

Every speech Clinton makes and every press stunt in which she participates is a dazzling display of disconnectedness from voters whose concerns she cannot fathom. From her perspective, however, it’s only fair to hold ordinary American citizens in contempt. If we commoners wanted to avoid economic hardships in our own lives, then we should have been more eager than Clinton was to trample on people weaker than ourselves. Those of us who didn’t seize the opportunity to profit from the school-to-prison pipeline or to advocate fracking in struggling economies all over the globe or to exploit worldwide sympathy for Haitians to line the pockets of our friends and family members—well, we only have ourselves to blame.

If Hillary could really win a general election in November, then the Democratic party might be able to survive her nomination. But she can’t win an election because there are only two kinds of people who will vote for her: the misleaders and the misled.

The misleadership class that supports Clinton consists of the people who are already on her payroll and others who seek to be on her payroll. Their motives are clear; their incentives are real; and their support of Clinton is perversely genuine inasmuch as they are championing the candidate who is most like themselves. Some of them work in politics; some work in churches; some work in the media; but they are united in their purpose of putting themselves as far ahead as possible by making sure the people whom they influence stay as far behind as possible. These folks will vote for Clinton, but there aren’t as many of them as Clinton likes to pretend. 

The class of the misled includes rank-and-file citizens who trust their local politicians, their local clergy, and the corporate media to tell them what is in their best interest. Such people are often overworked and underpaid. They are too busy and exhausted to pay close attention to national politics, and they may only have access to information via frequencies approved in advance by the Clinton machine. These folks will also vote for Clinton, but the existence of the internet means that the ranks of the misled are dwindling by the hour. 

The misleaders and the misled who support Clinton do not even constitute half of the Democratic Party—much less half of the general electorate. Clinton therefore has no realistic chance of winning. She has relied on the foil of Donald Trump to prop up the sputtering viability of her own candidacy, but as we watch the wheels falling off the Trump campaign, we must realize that Clinton is going to have to beat another actual politician with an actual ground game. She can’t do it. 

But as I indicated earlier, the elite members of the Democratic Party are determined to nominate her not because they believe she will win in November, but because they know that her Republican opponent (whoever that turns out to be) will pose less of a threat to their gravy train than Bernie Sanders does.

I understand why the DNC leaders believe this strategy will work. They’ve seen how successful Clinton has been at destabilizing and disenfranchising people throughout the world by removing their leaders from power. Why should it surprise anyone that she’s willing to destabilize and disenfranchise the Democratic base by running as an unelectable candidate—a candidate who cynically relies on her own toxicity to prevent the people she purportedly represents from having a voice in government?

But there’s a critical difference between cutting power off at the head and cutting it off at the base. If you remove the democratically elected leader of Honduras from power, Honduras doesn’t cease to exist. But if you remove the voting base from the Democratic party, all you have left is a train starving for gravy.

So good luck, Paul Krugman. Good luck, Barney Frank. Good luck, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Good luck, Queen Hillary. Good luck with your glorious future of presiding over nothing and no one.