Trouble in paradise?
From The Hill:
Congressional Black Caucus members are furious at Justice Democrats, accusing the outside progressive group aligned with firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) of trying to oust lawmakers of color, specifically African American lawmakers.
Justice Democrats are supporting primary challengers against two Democratic incumbents - with concerns among the sitting lawmakers that the group could back about half-a-dozen more.
CBC members and some top Democratic aides have questioned who is pulling the strings at Justice Democrats. The group, which is targeting entrenched incumbent Democrats they view as insufficiently progressive and beholden to corporate donors, was founded in the wake of President Trump’s surprise 2016 victory by progressive media personalities Cenk Uygur and Kyle Kulinski, along with Bernie Sanders organizers Saikat Chakrabarti and Corbin Trent.
Uygur and Kulinski are no longer with the group. And after winning a seat in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez hired Chakrabarti as her chief of staff and Trent as her communications director.
Justice Democrats’ spat with the Black Caucus comes amid high racial tensions in the 235-member House Democratic Caucus. Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of singling out “newly elected women of color” when the Speaker scolded lawmakers in a private meeting Wednesday for tweeting at each other.
Pelosi clarified Thursday that her comments were aimed at Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, who had earlier tweeted that the moderate New Democrats and Blue Dog Coalition should be renamed “The New Southern Democrats.”
Remember, don't call it a civil war inside the Democratic Party. Such a description is only to be used when describing the internal power struggles in the GOP.
Of course, this is precisely why identity politics is so destructive to the political discourse and the society at large. Disagreement over policy, differences of opinion, and competing motives are all cast through a prism of victimhood, empowering the party that can claim a greater collection of grievances - real or imagined.
It was only a matter of time that white Democrats would be the target of the kinds of attacks that conservatives and libertarians (of any race) have been receiving for years.
House Democrats are calling for unity amid a week of escalating tensions and sharp words that have once again laid bare the deep divides in a caucus fractured along ideological and generational lines.
A growing rift has spilled out into public view between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who has pushed back in the face of comments from the speaker that have widely been interpreted as hostile toward the four progressive freshmen Democrats known as "the squad" -- Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, AOC's chief of staff admits what we all suspected about the Green New Deal - that it's not really about combating climate change.
From the Daily Caller:
Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, made the revealing admission in a meeting with Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s climate director in May. A Washington Post reporter accompanied Chakrabarti to the meeting for a magazine profile published Wednesday.
TThe interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti said to Inslee’s climate director, Sam Ricketts.
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” Chakrabarti added.
Wow.
You don't say....
Pete's Prep: Friday, July 12, 2019
- Dr. Christopher Conover writing in the NC Medical Journal: "Medicaid expansion is unlikely to save lives." And Dr. Ray Cordato writes at Carolina Journal about why expanding Medicaid is "bad economics."
- Axios reports: "UN inspectors have found evidence of illicit nuclear activity in an Iranian warehouse which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in an address to the UN last September was used to store nuclear equipment and material..."
- Buzzfeed editor-in-chief, Ben Smith: "I helped create 'insider journalism,' and now it's time for it to go away."
- From Ars Technica: "Savage tick clone armies are sucking cows to death; experts fear for humans."
- Newsweek reports: Couple arrested for driving stolen car filled with Uranium, a rattlesnake, and whiskey.