Posted on 12/05/2013 1:21:53 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Key factions of the Democratic Party, which have largely been unified through some trying times in 2013, are now turning on each other.
Amid the botched rollout of ObamaCare and plummeting poll numbers, the simmering tensions within the party have intensified — and become very public.
A flashpoint came this week when Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal bashing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her allies for trying to lure the party over a “populist cliff.”
They took aim at her proposal to pay for an expansion of Social Security benefits by lifting the cap on payroll taxes. Such taxes do not apply to incomes above $113,700.
Liberals punched back by demanding that congressional Democrats affiliated with the think tank condemn the essay.
This back-and-forth represented a rare display of intraparty bickering, as much of the political media has focused on the GOP tug-of-war between the Tea Party and establishment Republicans.
Some contend the internecine fight on the left could continue into the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.
Groups such as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and Democracy for America pounced on Rep. Allyson Schwartz, an honorary co-chairwoman at Third Way, who is vying with a crowded field to win the Democratic nomination for governor in Pennsylvania.
Warren stepped into the fray Wednesday by calling on Wall Street’s biggest firms to voluntarily disclose how much they give to think tanks, an indirect shot at Third Way.
“Shareholders have a right to know how corporate resources are spent, and, even more importantly, policymakers and the public should be aware of your contributions and evaluate the work of these think tanks accordingly,” she wrote in a letter to the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, a division of Bank of America, have donated to Third Way, according to SourceWatch.org, a website that tracks fundraising.
Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, downplayed the criticism from liberal groups.
“Politics ain’t bean bag,” he said. “We’ve heard from them before. We believe we need to have real policy debates in the Democratic tank.
“We’re big believers in a big-tent party and vigorous debates,” he added.
Democrats have maintained impressive party cohesion since losing control of the House in 2010, but fissures have emerged in the wake of the error-plagued rollout of the Affordable Care Act.
A CNN/ORC poll from late November showed Republicans now have a slight advantage over Democrats on the generic ballot question among registered voters. Democrats had a sizeable lead after the government shutdown.
While vulnerable incumbents have proposed delaying penalties and suspending requirements for health plans, liberals have grumbled over what they see as a lack of cooperation from insurance companies.
Fraying party unity has complicated the prospects of a budget deal that would cut mandatory spending in exchange for mitigating the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration.
Obama reached out to his party’s base Wednesday by delivering an economic speech on income inequality, a favorite topics among liberals who want to see the minimum wage boosted to $10 an hour.
The president warned the American economy has become “profoundly unequal” and called economic mobility the “challenge of our time.”
Under pressure, Schwartz on Wednesday ripped the Third Way’s op-ed as “outrageous.”
“She absolutely disagrees with what was written. She thinks it was outrageous and has told Third Way that,” said Schwartz spokesman Mark Bergman. “She’s got a long record of standing up to protect Medicare and Social Security for seniors.”
She declined to step down from her post, however.
Schwartz has also received criticism from liberals recently by spearheading an effort to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a key component of ObamaCare.
Third Way’s Senate co-chairmen, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), declined or did not respond to requests to comment.
The same progressive groups that slammed Third Way recently called for a primary challenge against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton has not announced her plans, but she is widely expected to run.
Many liberals were angered by reports that Clinton had received an estimated $400,000 from Goldman Sachs, a top-flight investment firm, for two speeches.
“We want to make sure it’s very clear to Democrats on Capitol Hill that what Third Way is giving them is garbage political advice based on the interest of their Wall Street funders,” said Adam Green, PCCC’s founder.
Third Way has pressed Democrats in recent years to support a “grand bargain” fiscal deal that would curb the costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and raise revenues by closing tax loopholes.
In their Wall Street Journal op-ed, Jon Cowan, the president of Third Way, and Jim Kessler, a senior vice president, wrote: “Sen. Warren wants to increase benefits to all seniors, including billionaires, and to pay for them by increasing taxes on working people and their employers.”
They estimated her approach would result in a $750 billion tax hike over the next 10 years.
“Nothing would be more disastrous for Democrats,” they wrote of Warren’s argument for economic populism.
Warren on Wednesday reiterated that she does not plan to challenge Clinton in 2016.
Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, a liberal grassroots advocacy group, said the Third Way’s congressional co-chairmen “should all be questioning how much they want to be connected to a group obsessed with cutting Social Security benefits.”
“They’re going to be on the wrong side of history,” he said. “They are definitely on the wrong side of the American public.
“We’ve polled all over this country on expanding Social Security benefits,” he said.
It is possible to be a socialist, and radical in one's agendas, and yet moderate in the means one regards as practical to achieve them. To change the world, it is first necessary to acquire cultural and political power. And these transitional goals may often be accomplished by indirection and deception even more effectively than by frontal assault. Political stratagems that appear moderate and compromised to radical factions of the left may present an even greater threat from the perspective of the other side. In 1917, Lenin's political slogan wasn't "Socialist Dictatorship! Firing Squads and Gulags!" It was "Bread, Land and Peace."
Yet Hillary Clinton as America's "first lady of the left," is also not an obvious subject to many conservatives. And since conservative politics begins with the defense of America's constitutional order, this is a far more significant matter. Underestimating the foe on any battlefield can be a fatal fault; in politics likewise............................................"
They sure are. Both the Stalinists and regular Marxists are well represented, just no Americans.
I strongly support democrat infighting, but that article was a little confusing.
I gotta say Bill Clinton and the DLC had a good thing going on there for a while. And then they elected all those more conservative dems to congress (pro-life, etc.)
And then Barack Obama came along and lo and behold they are all under the bus.
Can Hillary Clinton put that humpty dumpty back together? I doubt it.
Hillary Clinton is Americas Elena Ceausceau
“I strongly support democrat infighting”....
Me too!!!!
Conservatives (note I included both the repubs and the Tea Party types) need to keep the heat on the demodummies and maybe, just maybe their power over the people will erode enough to allow conservative replacements come next election. Demodummies are definitely running scared and well they should.
A LITTLE confusing ?
more like eva peron
typical progressive logic
if you oppose raising social security benefits, then that means you are “slashing” them
“Hillary Clinton is Americas Elena Ceausceau.”
She sure is. This article reminds me of when the Germans thought Goering and Himmler were infighting. This is propaganda.
Oh, wait, Boehner is so sorry of letting Obamacare be a democrat issue that cannot be blamed on the GOP or Bush, that now with Amnesty he is going to correct the record and make Hillary happy.
The mainstream press wants to focus only on the far right, but now the Democrats are heavily exposed and the mainstream press is having a hard time covering for them with the mid-terms coming up.
The news keeps getting worse and worse for the Democratic Party as it contemplates 2014 and 2016. The congressional wing of the part finds itself strapped to Obamacare, a disaster that promises to anger voters even more next year than this, with tens of millions losing coverage through employer-provided policies, and back-end website chaos leaving people who thought they were covered uninsured when show up at the emergency room.
But Democrats comforted themselves with the notion that the "historic first" strategy that worked so well with Barack Obama would repeat itself in 2016 with Hillary Clinton becoming the Republic's first woman president. The excitement over the 51% of the population that is female mobilized to push Hillary and the entire ticket to success has been almost the sole comfort for the donkeys.
But there are signs that this is as much a fantasy as the notion that if you like your insurance and doctor, you can keep them. Paul Bedard writes in the Washington Examiner:
"A new YouGov/Economist poll found Clinton, whose approval ratings have typically been sky high, with an unfavorable rating of 48 percent, more than the 46 percent who have a favorable opinion of her.
The YouGov pollsters said that the change in American attitudes toward Clinton "suggests that negative press surrounding the tragic September 11, 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which led to the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, may have impacted views about Clinton and her tenure at the State Department."
During her time at State, Clinton's favorable ratings were typically 15 points higher than her unfavorable ratings." I always believed that Hillary's approval ratings as Secretary of State were purely the result of the enthusiastic media coverage she received....(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Mr. President, learn from Ceausescu! (October 2010)
http://www.wnd.com/2010/10/211825/
Are we nearing Obama’s Ceausescu Moment?
If there is going to a Democrat civil war, I would like to suggest that it be fought with automatic weapons.
He's right, and oh so wrong at the same time. One of the truly great things about the America that used to be was economic mobility. It's well documented that successive generations had a high probability of moving up or down the economic ladder. The English had a rigid set of economic and social classes; we had "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations."
What Obama and his clique miss is that the more oppressive the economic drag you put on workers, the more difficult you make economic mobility, at least upward economic mobility. The economic friction on savings accumulation (ZIRP to support government waste, taxes, regulation) grows greater every year. Meanwhile, it's easier and easier to move down into the government safety net of economic justice. I mean, with all of the disincentives for industrious behavior, "Why bother?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.