Tag Archives: democratic

Forget Elizabeth Warren. Another Female Senator Has a Shot to Fill the Senate’s New Power Vacuum.

by RogelioUnderwood Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

In the nanoseconds after Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid announced Friday morning that he will give up his leadership post and retire in 2016, liberal groups raced to promote their go-to solution for almost any political problem: Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Much like the movement to draft Warren for president, the idea of putting her in charge of the Democratic caucus was more dream than reality. Warren’s office has already said she won’t run, and as Vox‘s Dylan Matthews explains, putting Warren in charge of the Democratic caucus would prevent her from holding her colleagues accountable when they stray too far from progressive ideals.

Instead, Reid’s likely replacement is New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who already has endorsements from Reid and Dick Durbin, the outgoing minority leader’s No. 2. But lefties have long been wary of Schumer, who, thanks to his home base in New York City, is far more sympathetic to Wall Street than the rest of his caucus. And lost in the Warren hype is another female senator: Washington’s Patty Murray.

As caucus secretary, Murray is the fourth-ranking member of Senate Democratic leadership, behind Reid, Durbin, and Schumer. If she decides to take on Schumer for Reid’s job, Murray could be the first woman to serve as a party leader in the US Senate. Murray’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether she’d run for the job and, besides a general statement praising Reid, was notably quiet on Friday.

In 2013, I cowrote a profile of Murray for The American Prospect looking at her role in leading Democrats’ negotiations with Republicans on the budget, and explained how she’s a pragmatic progressive who will push for the most liberal policies she can pass while still being willing to forge compromise with the centrists in her party:

There’s something peculiarly undefined about Murray’s ideology. She’s a liberal, a West Coast liberal to be precise: strong on social issues, the environment, workers’ rights, and the government’s role in society. She hews closely to the Democratic talking points of the day. But it’s hard to discern a coherent vision or theory behind her views. She is as far left as you can go without alienating the centrists in the party. More than anything, she’s a pragmatist. Success trumps belief in the “right” things. At the same time, Murray doesn’t venerate moderation for its own sake—she’s no Rahm Emanuel. “She’s a strong progressive,” says a former Budget Committee staff member, “but she won’t tilt at windmills, she won’t force a vote on something she knows she’s not going to win.”

Murray certainly has the résumé to compete for the job. She led the Democrats’ campaign arm in 2012, when the party picked up two Senate seats, defying pundits’ predictions. She forged a budget agreement with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in 2013 that averted across-the-board budget cuts. Murray is generally press-shy—she flies home across the country each weekend instead of doing the Sunday show circuit—which would leave room for other Senate stars, including Warren, to be the party’s public face while Murray controls the behind-the-scenes negotiations. But as that budget committee staffer told me in 2013, Murray isn’t known for picking fights she can’t win. If she runs against Schumer, it’ll be because she thinks she has a real shot at Reid’s post.

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Forget Elizabeth Warren. Another Female Senator Has a Shot to Fill the Senate’s New Power Vacuum.

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

by k8qxuani Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, I reported on the newly public diary of retired Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), the longtime Clinton ally, which is included in the 89-year-old’s personal papers at the University of Arkansas. In entries penned during the 1980s, Bumpers was highly critical of the Clintons, dishing on the future First Couple’s “obsessive” qualities and alleged “dirty tricks” by Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign. Bumpers, who gave the closing argument for the defense in President Clinton’s impeachment trial, became a close friend and confidante of the president later in his career. But the previously unreported entries revealed a more tense relationship in the early going, as Clinton vied for political elbow room with the Democratic icon.

In response to the Mother Jones piece, the University of Arkansas library has pulled the diary from its collection at the request of Bumpers’ son, Brent. Per the Arkansas Democrat–Gazette:

Brent Bumpers of Little Rock, son of the former senator, said he was “shocked” by the diary. He has questioned its origin and authenticity, saying nobody in the family had ever heard anything about Dale Bumpers keeping a dairy.

Brent Bumpers said his father, who is 89 years old, doesn’t remember keeping a diary. He said Dale Bumpers always admired the Clintons and wouldn’t have written the things the diary contains.

Brent Bumpers said he wants to review the diary, but he won’t have the opportunity for several days.

Although Dale Bumpers hasn’t personally requested that the diary be pulled, Laura Jacobs, UA associate vice chancellor for university relations, said Brent Bumpers is speaking and acting on behalf of his father regarding the Dale Bumpers Papers.

But the Bumpers diary could not have been written by anyone but Dale Bumpers. When not commenting on the various politicians he interacted with, it is filled with personal musings on his wife, Betty, and three kids; the strains of the job; can’t-miss events such as the annual Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival; and the trials of a first-time candidate at an Iowa presidential cattle call—all interspersed with the thoughtful reflections of a lawmaker who was generally regarded as such.

This is the second time in the last year that the University of Arkansas has made news by restricting access to a political archive in its special collections. Last year, the university’s library blocked the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, from accessing its collections because of a dispute over publishing rights. (The library ultimately backed down.)

With Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush both running for president, reporters (and opposition researchers) will have more access to archival records than perhaps ever before. The two candidates have nearly a century of public life between them; that’s a heck of a paper trail. This may not be the last time a little-noticed archive makes news.

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

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Mitt Romney’s Email Hypocrisy

by Arnette8511 Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

The Hillary Clinton email kerfuffle has revealed that high-tech record-fiddling is a bipartisan phenomenon. It has also showed that for many pols hypocrisy is no reason to forego a political attack. Jeb Bush eagerly slammed HRC for her email shenanigans, despite the fact that he, too, relied upon a private server when he was governor and after leaving office vetted his gubernatorial emails before making them public. Now comes Mitt Romney. In an interview with Katie Couric of Yahoo, the failed Republican presidential candidate blasted Clinton for her (indeed problematic and rules-defying) management of the emails she sent and received as secretary of state. Romney called this “mess” an example of “Clintons behaving badly.”

And he poured it on thick: “I mean, it’s always something with the Clintons. Which is that they have rules which they describe before they get into something, and then they decide they don’t have to follow their own rules. That I think is gonna be a real problem for her.” He added: “she chose to say, ‘No. I’m not gonna follow those rules and regulations. Not only am I gonna have private email, I’m gonna put the server in my house so that there’s no way anyone can find out what was really said.’ That is something which is going way beyond the pale.”

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Mitt Romney’s Email Hypocrisy

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The Return of the Clinton Media Persecution Complex

by ShoshanBeavers Posted on March 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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It is, unfortunately, an old and all-too familiar story. A Clinton, meaning Bill or Hillary, does something wrong (or possibly wrong). The media pounces; the Clinton antagonists of the right hit the warpath. Immediately, the Clinton camp and its supporters accuse the media and the conservative Clinton Hate Machine of trumping up a story to thwart the noble Clintons. Clinton spokespeople go into war-room mode. Resentful reporters grouse (privately and publicly) about the heavy-handed operators and obfuscators of Clintonland. And the right claims this latest fuss is a scandal that surpasses Watergate. Rinse, repeat.

The latest iteration of this Clinton-media dysfunctional spin cycle was triggered by the Hillary Clinton email kerfuffle that exploded last week. The Clinton camp’s handling of the controversy was a sign that Hillary and her gang are stuck in the Whitewaterish 1990s when it comes to communications strategy, relying on always-be-combating tactics predicated on self-perceived persecution. It’s bad news for anyone hoping that Hillary 2016 has learned from the miscalculations of the past.

Clinton’s use of a private email account to conduct secretary of state business and, just as important, her failure to preserve her messages in real-time within the department’s own record-keeping system were not, as Clintonites claimed, no biggie. Yes, Scott Walker had his own secret email scandal. And Jeb Bush, who tried to score political points by slamming Clinton, vetted his gubernatorial emails before releasing them to the public, while congratulating himself on his supposed devotion to transparency. (I’ve combed the Bush email archive for names and topics that ought to be there—and found obvious subjects absent.) So the Clinton defenders have a point when they gripe that the media is only obsessed with her email problem. But it is a small point. She was a Cabinet official. She had a duty to ensure that her records—which belong to the public, not her—would be controlled by the department, not by her private aides who operate her private server.

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The Return of the Clinton Media Persecution Complex

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Scott Walker Just Blatantly Pandered to Iowa’s Corn Farmers

by JudeSlater Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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As the Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker has resisted the federal government’s support of the biofuel industry. But last weekend, within the borders of corn-rich Iowa—the state upon which Walker appears most intensely focused for his all-but-announced presidential bid—he sang a different tune. Joining other potential candidates at the Iowa Ag Summit, Walker said he was “willing to go forward on continuing the Renewable Fuel Standard,” a federal policy that requires fuel used in the US to contain at least 10 percent “renewable fuel,” usually ethanol and other biofuel.

As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel noted, this represents a complete about-face for Walker, who made enemies in Wisconsin for his long resistance to robust ethanol subsidies. Corn is Wisconsin’s most important crop, and in 2012, the state was the nation’s second-biggest ethanol exporter. In January 2014, Walker stayed quiet on a federal proposal to cut ethanol use by three billion gallons. That silence angered biofuel producers in the state, according to the Journal-Sentinel, as well as the governors of nearly every other Midwestern state, including Iowa’s Terry Branstad.

Walker’s opposition to the federal ethanol mandate stretches back to 2006, when he was the Milwaukee county executive running for governor. The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) was a year old, and it was considered a viable way to reduce US use of foreign oil, improve the environment, and help out American farmers. However, Walker said, “it is clear to me that a big government mandate is not the way to support the farmers of this state.” Bruce Pfaff, Walker’s then-campaign manager, told Wisconsin’s Daily Reporter, “How can you justify the mandate when it is not proven whether or not it will help gas prices, the economy or the environment?”

Indeed, studies have found that ethanol is worse for the climate than fossil fuel. Though the mandate has been a boon to corn producers—40 percent of American corn is now used for biofuel—it also caused food prices to rise in the United States and abroad. Beyond that, given the recent increase in fossil fuel production in the US, environmental groups and taxpayer organizations are arguing that continued federal support of ethanol production—once considered an important alternative to foreign oil—is unnecessary.

But in Iowa, which produces nearly a third of US ethanol, the industry is far from unnecessary. The RFS will expire in 2022. This past weekend, Walker said that he’d continue the mandate, but he added that he hoped the United States will eventually not need it.

Walker’s evolution on the issue is already handing his critics and opponents ammunition. The conservative blog Hot Air called Walker’s stance a “big let down.” It praised the lone conservative who opposed RFS last weekend: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “I recognize that this is a gathering of a lot of folks where the answer you’d like me to give is ‘I’m for the RFS, darnit.’ That’d be the easy thing to do,” Cruz said. “I’ll tell you, people are pretty fed up, I think, with politicians who run around and tell one group one thing, tell another group another thing.”

Walker’s enemies in the Democratic Party let loose too. DNC spokesman Jason Pitt told the Wisconsin State Journal, “If Scott Walker thinks pandering on ethanol is going to convince people he’s anything but backwards on energy and the environment he can think again.”

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Scott Walker Just Blatantly Pandered to Iowa’s Corn Farmers

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Yes, Education Matters. But It’s Not the Answer to Growing Income Inequality.

by GloriaSeeley Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

David Brooks has a bit of an odd column today:

For many years, Democratic efforts to reduce inequality and lift middle-class wages were based on the theory that the key is to improve the skills of workers. Expand early education. Make college cheaper. Invest in worker training. Above all, increase the productivity of workers so they can compete.

But a growing number of populist progressives have been arguing that inequality is not mainly about education levels. They argue that trying to lift wages by improving skills is an “evasion.” It’s “whistling past the graveyard.”

….Focusing on human capital is not whistling past the graveyard. Worker productivity is the main arena. No redistributionist measure will have the same long-term effect as good early-childhood education and better community colleges, or increasing the share of men capable of joining the labor force.

I don’t quite get who Brooks is arguing against here. Larry Summers is the obvious target, but Summers has been clear that he thinks education is important, both individually and for the economy as a whole. He just doesn’t think that improved education is likely to have much impact on growing income inequality, which is driven by other factors.

But Brooks never even pretends to address this. I don’t think there are any prominent Democrats arguing that education isn’t important. Pretty much all of them are on board with good early-childhood education and better community colleges, among other things. That will help individuals and make the American economy stronger.

But will it rein in growing income inequality? As long as inequality is driven primarily by the gains of the top 1 percent—which it is—then it won’t. To address that particular problem, we have to look elsewhere.

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Yes, Education Matters. But It’s Not the Answer to Growing Income Inequality.

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This Congressman Doesn’t Want a Federal Science Board to Be Allowed to Consider Science

by JanellSibley Posted on March 6, 2015

Mother Jones

This story originally appeared in Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last year, the House of Representatives passed two absurd anti-science bills, the Secret Science Reform Act and the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act. It will come as no surprise that both bills, under the guise of “reform,” would have the practical effect of crippling the EPA’s efforts to assess science in a fair and timely way. I don’t have the heart to get into it — follow the links above for the details.

The bills are back; the House considered them both again yesterday. Emily Atkin has the gory details if you’re interested. They might get a little further this time—the Democratic Senate didn’t take them up last year, obviously, but the GOP-controlled Senate might this year—though it won’t matter in the end, as Obama has threatened to veto both. So it’s mainly yet another act of reactionary symbolism from the right.

All that is by way of background so I can draw your attention to a hilarious amendment attached to the Science Advisory Board bill. It comes by way of the bill’s sponsor, Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), a far-right, coal-country, climate-denying conservative of the old school.

Here’s the amendment. Its sole purpose is to prohibit the EPA’s Science Advisory Board from taking into consideration, for any purpose, the following reports:

the US Global Change Research Program’s National Climate Assessment

the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

the May 2013 Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order No. 12866 (which I wrote about here)
the July 2014 Pathways to Deep Decarbonization Report, from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (which I wrote about here)

So. When considering what to do about carbon pollution, EPA may not consider what America’s best scientists have concluded about it, what an international panel of scientists has concluded about it, how the federal government has officially recommended calculating its value, or the most comprehensive solutions for it. Oh, and it can’t consider Agenda 21 either. Otherwise the EPA can go nuts.

As I’ve said many, many times, most Americans have no idea how batshit crazy the House GOP has gone. They serve the base, and only the base (and Politico obsessives) pay close attention. But imagine, if you will, a GOP House and Senate paired with President Jeb Bush. A bill like this might pass. Politicians might be picking and choosing, based on ideological criteria, which scientific reports administrative agencies are allowed to consider. It’s amusing in its own dark way, but it’s not a sitcom or a satire. It’s real life.

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This Congressman Doesn’t Want a Federal Science Board to Be Allowed to Consider Science

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Could Rubio’s Past Slip-Ups Haunt a White House Bid?

by JermainDuCane Posted on March 5, 2015

Mother Jones

Every day seems to bring Florida Sen. Marco Rubio closer to a presidential run. In recent weeks, the first-term senator has toured the early primary states, including Iowa and New Hampshire, to promote his new, and very presidential-sounding book, American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone.

A talented orator, a Spanish speaker, and a legislator from a key swing state, Rubio could be a strong GOP contender. But his political career in the Florida State House from 2000 to 2009 dovetails with a golden age of corruption in Sunshine State politics. The FBI and the IRS descended on Florida in 2010 to investigate how Florida Republican officials and top pols, including Rubio, used their state party credit cards. He was not the worst offender. Others were criminally charged; Rubio was not. But by the time Rubio was running for the US Senate in 2010, the St. Petersburg Times noted the “sheer number of public corruption investigations under way appears unprecedented in Florida.”

During that race, Rubio’s opponents hounded him over these issues. Still, Rubio was elected. But a presidential bid would bring national scrutiny to his record in Florida. Here are some of the scandals that Rubio has survived…so far.

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Could Rubio’s Past Slip-Ups Haunt a White House Bid?

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Obama Just Vetoed the GOP’s Keystone Bill, and This Democratic Presidential Hopeful Is Pissed

by pawel Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

Jim Webb is sounding increasingly serious about running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Last week, National Journal‘s Bob Moser wrote a cover story wondering whether the former Virginia senator could “spark an anti-Hillary uprising,” in which Webb explained that his absence from the campaign trail this winter was, in part, the result of major knee surgery to fix problems leftover from his days in the Vietnam War.

Webb struck his first blow against his fellow Democrats on Wednesday. But rather than targeting Clinton, his likely presidential opposition, he struck out against the party’s incumbent, President Barack Obama. In a series of tweets, Webb lashed out at the president for vetoing a bill that would have approved construction on the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Webb’s tweetstorm doesn’t tell the whole story. A letter from the EPA released earlier this month argued that, thanks to recent drops in oil prices, Keystone XL could prove disastrous for carbon emissions.

As I detailed in December, Jim Webb had an atrocious record on climate change and environmental issues while he served in the Senate. Standing up for Virginia’s roots as a coal state, Webb tried to thwart Obama’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gasses through EPA regulation, and he helped block Democratic attempts to pass a cap-and-trade law.

Clinton, for her part, has regularly sidestepped addressing whether she wants to see the pipeline constructed, though she has generally been supportive of other environmental efforts made by the Obama administration.

While Webb objected to Obama’s decision to veto this specific bill, it’s still unclear whether the two Democrats disagree on the underlying issue. Obama has strenuously rejected attempts by congressional Republicans to force immediate approval of the pipeline, but his administration has not yet said definitely if it intends to let the project go forward eventually.

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Obama Just Vetoed the GOP’s Keystone Bill, and This Democratic Presidential Hopeful Is Pissed

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Is It Fair to Keep Peppering Scott Walker With Gotcha Questions?

by MarlonCorones Posted on February 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Lately Scott Walker has been asked:

Whether he agrees with Rudy Giuliani’s comment that President Obama doesn’t love America.
Whether he believes in evolution.
Whether he believes that Obama is a Christian.

Is this fair? Why is Walker being peppered with gotcha questions like this? Are Democrats getting the same treatment?

There are no Democrats running for president yet, so it’s hard to say what kind of questions they’re going to be asked. But if Hillary Clinton attends a fundraising dinner where, say, Michael Moore suggests that Dick Cheney should be tried as a war criminal, I’m pretty sure Hillary will be asked if she agrees. And asked and asked and asked.

As for the other stuff Walker is being asked about—evolution, climate change, Obama’s religion, etc.—there really is a good reason for getting someone like Walker on the record. He’s basically a tea party guy who’s trying to appear more mainstream than the other tea party guys, and everyone knows that there are certain issues that are tea party hot buttons. So you have to ask about them to take the measure of the man. Sure, they’re gotcha questions, but they have a legitimate purpose: to find out if Walker is a pure tea party creature or not. That’s a matter of real public interest.

Conservatives are complaining that Walker is facing a double standard. Maybe. We’ll find out when Hillary and the rest of the Democratic field start campaigning in earnest. But I’m curious. What kinds of similar questions would be gotchas for Democrats? Drivers licenses for undocumented workers? Support for single-payer healthcare? Those aren’t really the same, but I can’t come up with anything that is. It needs to be something that’s either conspiracy-theorish or else something where the liberal base conflicts with the scientific consensus, and I’m not sure what that is. GMO foods? Heritability of IQ? Whether George Bush stole the 2004 election by tampering with voting machines? I’m stretching here, but that’s because nothing really comes to mind.

Help me out. What kinds of Scott-Walkerish gotcha questions should reporters be saving up for Hillary?

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Is It Fair to Keep Peppering Scott Walker With Gotcha Questions?

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