Believability

The Wall Street Journal spent several column inches and a potful of pixels writing about how Michigan’s socialist Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Senate, Abdul el-Sayed, is trying to walk back some of the heat he delivered in the primary.

In the last week, the fiery progressive distanced himself from Hasan Piker after the controversial left-wing streamer suggested that American Jews’ support for Israel could put them at risk. El-Sayed in a Fox News interview also cast himself as focused on kitchen-table issues—not the culture war.

The short and sweet of it is this.

El-Sayed spoke from his heart when he was campaigning and hobnobbing with Piker. Now he’s just covering his political behind and tossing his colleague under the bus.

El-Sayed’s words today are not believable.

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

One of President Donald Trump’s (R) advisors, Jared Kushner, met with Progressive-Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY), ostensibly to seek out areas of “common ground” in advance of Jeffries’ ascension to House Speaker in January.

The Left has been ripping at its collective bodice ever since news of the meeting broke. I also disagree with the usefulness of the meeting, but for different reasons. The first is that Jeffries cannot be trusted to keep any agreement, formal or tacit, out loud or unspoken, with a President or a Party whose members he’s spent his time in the House smearing as unpatriotic threats to democracy and/or personally dishonest.

This corroborates my position:

Jeffries said the only way the Democrats and the Trump administration would come to agreements on issues would be if Republicans were willing to give ground to Democrats on cost-of-living issues, which is the Republican’s top priority.

Nothing about his party giving ground to Republicans on any question. Nothing about compromise at all. This is Jeffries’ statement that he will lead Party to pass legislation without Republican input that isn’t Republican surrender. This is Jeffries’ statement that he and Party will simply dictate legislation and non-Party Representatives can go hang.

This is corroborated by Party’s commitment to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate as soon as they get a majority there, enabling Party to impose its will on us Americans wholly independently of any other party input and utterly without compromise.

That arrogance makes Jeffries and Party entirely untrustworthy.

SNAP Reforms

The Senate’s Progressive-Democrats object to States having even minimal fiscal responsibility for managing Federal outlays to them for welfare programs. Their latest objections concern reforms to SNAP payments. Currently, the Federal government forks over 100% of the funding for a State’s SNAP program, and the State is solely responsible for disbursing those funds to eligible recipients. The current reforms, enacted last year, require those States with error rates—paying out to fraudulent recipients, for instance—above a low level (10%) to begin picking up a small part of the SNAP tab, with effect in 2028.

Progressive-Democrat Senators, en masse, object, and they’re blocking a farm bill unless they get that deadline extended. Their real goal is to functionally eliminate the deadline.

There is an alternative that would render this sort of Progressive-Democrat…foolishness…moot, and it’s one I’ve proposed before. Maybe its time has come, in response to Party’s studied intransigence to any reform that would reduce dependency on Party government.

Designate a nearby year as Year0, and add up all the Federal funds transfers for any purpose to each State in that year. Lump that sum into a single payment for the year. In each subsequent year, reduce that lump sum payment by 10% of the Year0 transfer, until the transfer is reduced, in about 10 years, to $0.00.

Federal transfers—taxpayer dollars—in general should not be getting made to any State except in exigent circumstances. The good citizens of Texas should not see their tax remittances pushed on over to New York or California. The good citizens of New York and California should not see their remittances relayed to Illinois or Iowa. Each State and territory in our union should keep its citizens’ tax remittances solely for the benefit of that State’s/territory’s citizens.

Exigent circumstances: when a State-wide or region-wide emergency arises that’s beyond the resources of that State or region, then Federal transfers (a going in allocation, to start the discussion, would be 50% grant and 50% loan at market interest rates) would be an appropriate means of assisting the State or region in dealing with the emergency.

Examples of Progressive-Democratic Party Thought

This is what some Progressive-Democratic Party candidates for office, some of whom have won their primaries and others of whom have significant leads in their primaries, are campaigning on. Keep in mind that party primaries are where party voters choose who they want to represent them.

Darializa Avila Chevalier Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for a US Congressional seat from New York:

  • government ownership of the means of production
  • prison abolitionist
  • police abolitionist
  • proud of wiping her dirty hands on the American flag
  • open celebrant of Hamas butchery

Francesca Hong, Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for Wisconsin’s Governor:

  • abolish the Senate
  • police exist to uphold white supremacy
  • canceling Thanksgiving as a colonizer holiday
  • canceling Halloween and Christmas just because

Christina Bohannan, Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for a seat representing Iowa in the US Congress:

  • patriotism is a sensitive and controversial subject
  • 1619 Project is preferred history of the US

Party has selected or is close to selecting similarly disposed candidates in other States—viz., Angie Craig for US Senate and Ilhan Omar for US Congress in Minnesota, Pramila Jayapal for US Congress (again!)—and it already elected the dual-membershipped (DSA and Party) Zorhan Mamdami. That’s only so far in this election cycle.

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party stands for, made explicit by its taking the Democratic Socialists of America into its bosom.

It’s true that Republicans picked Victor Marx as their candidate for Colorado governor, but he’s a clear exception to what the party stands for. Those others are typical of Party.

Obsessive-Compulsive

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians are beating each other up over who should hold sway over Party—socialists or Establishment Democrats. Their serious policy differences and the power struggle that otherwise would fracture Party, though, are not stopping them from linking arms in order to go against President Donald Trump (R). Consider the just concluded Party primary election in Michigan to determine who should represent Party in the US Senate. Democratic Socialist of America member Abdul el-Sayed edged Establishment Democrat Haley Stevens. El-Dayed’s campaign was marked by vitriol toward Stevens. However,

Ms Stevens, who spent the campaign avoiding the subject of Mr El-Sayed’s not-quite-spoken animus, last week ventured a diagonal allusion to it. “You want to blame all your problems on Jewish Americans,” she said in an online post. But she also vowed to support him in the general election—a paradox that nicely captures her party’s pusillanimity on the Jewish question.

Hours after her defeat, Stevens posted on X:

I love Michigan and am so proud to have put up my hand to serve. I spoke with Abdul a few moments ago to offer him my full support as we work to defeat Mike Rogers this November. Thank you, Michigan.

She loves Michigan, or she hates President Donald Trump (R) and/or Jews that much? Trump, not Rogers, since both el-Sayed and Stevens, were running against Trump, not Rogers. Jews, since el-Sayed never hid his antisemitic bigotry under a bushel, while Stevens tacitly agreed with his bigotry through her silence on that.

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) endorsement of el-Sayed within hours of his primary victory. The Jewish Party mucky-muck looked past el-Sayed’s hatred of him and his religious confreres to make his endorsement explicitly about his own hatred of Trump.

Democrats are united by a common purpose: putting a check on Donald Trump by defeating his Republican enablers and taking back the Senate. We look forward to working with Abdul….

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians are so deeply immersed in their anti-Trump obsession that they’re compulsively supporting the candidate whom they so deeply despised before the Primary and who has such strong contempt for them and such raw hatred of so many Americans.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party our nation is facing in the fall mid-terms. Weak-kneed on honesty, lacking entirely the courage to denounce bigotry, embracing the destructive policies of the Democratic Socialists of America, accepting violence-embracing, if not outright inciting, rhetoric (you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message).