ESTABLISHMENT DEMS WOULD RATHER BE A CORPORATIST MINORITY PARTY THAN A LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE MAJORITY PARTY

This New Republic article is the most disheartening thing I read yesterday:

... again and again, in must-win House and Senate races, rather than embracing candidates that are proving their capacity to spark grassroots Democratic enthusiasm and tap into the populist ferment of the American public, establishment leaders [of the Democratic Party] are working to tilt the scales in favor of exactly the kind of uninspiring corporatists that dug the party’s current hole.

The villains of the piece include the worst pair of Democratic senators from any state, and it happens to be my state:

We’re seeing this play out very clearly in the Senate race in Michigan. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, backed by Bernie Sanders, is a full-throated progressive populist.... State Senator Mallory McMorrow is running as a D.C. outsider. Both are charismatic communicators and strong grassroots fundraisers; despite refusing to take corporate PAC money, they raised $1.8 million and $2.1 million, respectively, in the last quarter.

So naturally the Democratic establishment is pushing hard for a third candidate, with reports that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Democratic [Senatorial] Campaign Committee, are privately encouraging donors to line up behind Congresswoman Haley Stevens.

Stevens is not charismatic in person. She is not an effective communicator online; her social media posts regularly get single-digit engagement. She’s not a strong fundraiser; she raised less than either McMorrow or El-Sayed, with just $1.3 million in new contributions last quarter, despite being the only candidate in the race taking money from corporations. And she’s taking a lot of it, with hundreds of thousands of dollars from nearly 100 different corporate PACs representing Wall Street (Goldman Sachs, the American Bankers Association); fossil fuels (Dupont, Dow, the American Chemistry Council); insurance (UnitedHealth, Cigna, Blue Cross Blue Shield), utilities (Cox, Verizon, DTE); Big Tech (Google, Microsoft); retailers (Walmart, Home Depot); Big Sugar; and many, many others.

Unlike McMorrow and El-Sayed, who both oppose weapons shipments to Israel, Stevens is firmly in the pocket of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: She raised more money from AIPAC than she did in small-dollar unitemized contributions.

A similar dynamic is playing out in a House race in California, where the party establishment appears to be urging "State Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains—arguably California’s most conservative Democratic legislator, whose blatant shilling for the fossil fuel industry earned her the moniker 'Big Oil Bains'"—to run against vulnerable Republican David Valadao, rather than a progressive educator named Randy Villegas.

If this plays out all over the country, Democrats will lose in 2026 -- and continue the process of losing an entire generation of voters -- even if the White House allows free and fair midterms to take place. Every authoritarian party wants to neutralize its opposition, but Republicans seem to have lucked into an opposition party that's working to neutralize itself.

When I posted a link to the story at Bluesky yesterday, a commenter pointed me the Rational Wiki page about the Iron Law of Institutions:

The Iron Law of Institutions, created by political blogger Jon Schwarz, states:

The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

I don't think Democratic institutionalists want the party to fail exactly. But I think their comfort zone is exactly where Democrats are now: close to a majority in the House and Senate, but not quite there, which means they're powerless and can't be pressured to fight for real change in America. Being close to a majority means they can tell ordinary voters and potential small-dollar donors that they might win majorities next time. So give! Vote! But definitely give! And would you consider giving monthly?

But they won't do anything if they win back the House and Senate. There are realistic limits to what they can do, obviously -- President Trump can veto any bills they pass, and they'll never get 67 votes to convict any member of the administration they might impeach -- though they could still put a horrible person like Robert Kennedy Jr. through a Senate trial, just to try to remind people how awful this administration is.

But they don't want to go on offense. They don't want to begin the long process of attacking the cruelty and extremism of the Republican Party as an institution. They just want to keep winning their individual races and meekly doing their jobs, because they're in safe seats, and billionaire donors think America is just fine the way it is, even now.

And yet we need to elect Democrats, because Republican rule has given us a far-right Supreme Court (and Trump's future picks will extend that court's rule another couple of decades), as well as a president who's indistinguishable from many of the worst authoritarian dictators on the planet. It's still necessary to vote for Democrats to prevent everything from getting much, much worse. (Things can always get much, much worse.) But we need to vote against establishmentarians wherever we can. Primary Hakeem Jeffries. Defeat Nancy Pelosi. Send the message Republican voters sent when they shitcanned then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: No more business as usual.