From Bill Black:

Donna Brazile, a New Democrat, now runs the DNC. In this article, I show that Brazile denounced Democrats who refused to cheer President Bush’s invasion of Iraq (and his “Mission Accomplished” declaration) as so disloyal that when their country needed them they went “AWOL.” Not satisfied with that libel, she added the homophobic smear that voters would view Democrats who failed to cheer Bush’s lies and invasion as “effete.” Best of all, she said that Democrats should take as their role models Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Frank Gaffney – Bush’s “chicken hawks” that devised the campaign of lies that led to the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Gaffney is now spreading hate of Muslims – and advising President Trump.

The DNC is also in the news because it has just accepted a $20 million “donation” funded by Third Way, a Wall Street front group, to study why the white working class “abandoned” Hillary Clinton. Clinton is a leader of the New Democrats. Wall Street has long been the largest single funder of the New Democrats various institutions. The New Democrats, at the behest of Wall Street, have waged the “long war” against the working class since their formation in 1984. The New Democrats did not simply abandon the working class – they targeted it for scorn and assaulted it with policies that harmed many Americans, but caused the greatest harm to the working class.

Particularly in light of the Trump’s election, the logical reaction of the DNC would have been to refuse to take the Wall Street buyout and announce that the New Democrats would never again do Wall Street’s bidding. They would return to the Democratic Party’s historic role as the party that championed the rights of workers. Brazile, of course, ensured that the DNC eagerly took the $20 million Wall Street buyout. The New Democrats not only continue to be for sale (or rent) by Wall Street – they continue to show that they continue to for sale for chump change.

The DNC does not need $20 million to figure out why the white working class “abandoned” the New Democrats. They can check out from their local library Tom Frank’s books warning that this would happen and explaining in detail why the New Democrats’ long war against the working class was making it happen. Tom Frank has been writing books warning about this since 2004. If the DNC were under new management, it would have invited Tom Frank to meet with its entire staff in November.

Third Way is following the New Democrats’ unbroken tradition of servitude to the most despicable corporate patrons eager to see Republican anti-public policies triumph. Virtually every American is disgusted by the New Democrat’s embrace of the “Vampire Squid” (Goldman Sachs) exemplified by the Clintons’ mercenary speeches and Trump’s appointment of four senior officials with strong ties to Goldman Sachs.

What people need to know is that the New Democrats’ historic business patrons are more despicable that Goldman Sachs. The New Democrats’ first formal organization, created in 1984, was the Democratic Leadership Coalition (DLC). The DLC was funded overwhelmingly by huge corporations, but two of its donors are worthy of special note – the Koch Brothers and the Bradley Foundation. Tom Frank made this point forcefully in in 1984 in What’s the Matter with Kansas. The DLC spawned another Wall Street front group with an even more dishonest name – the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI).

Large corporations provided the bulk of PPI’s funding, but like the DLC it was also heavily funded by the Bradley Foundation. Harry Bradley, along with the Koch brothers’ father, was a charter member of the John Birch Society. That means they were off-the-charts looney and ultra-right wing. Mr. Bradley’s passion was his hatred for organized labor. He was a notorious for his employment discrimination against blacks and women. At the time the DLC and the PPI formed, the Bradley Foundation was the Nation’s most destructive funder of ultra-right wing efforts to influence policy. Today, it is the force behind Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s war against organized labor. The Nation’s most virulent and effective enemy of organized labor funded the New Democrats. The New Democrats knew what they were choosing to lie down with and they knew exactly what they were signaling to organized labor about their hostility to unions and disdain for the working class…

With the arrival of Donald Trump, the preposterous has become the norm for the Republican Party, but the Democratic Party is moving from the farcical to the preposterous and (even more) suicidal. Donna Brazile, the New Democrat who runs the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has just accepted a $20 million donation from Third Way, which is “Wall Street on the Potomac.” Third Way falsely claims to be a progressive arm of the Democratic Party. Third Way is actually one of Wall Street many bases located in Washington, D.C. Wall Street funds it. Wall Street bosses run it. Third Way is a group of self-described “New Democrats.” The reality is that it acts, as its founders and funders intended to enrich and champion Wall Street CEOs. Jonathan Cowan, its leader, was a Pete Peterson protégé. Peterson is a Wall Street billionaire. He is a Republican. He devotes his money and time on his three obsessions: (1) creating and spreading a “moral panic” about the federal deficit and debt, (2) pushing austerity, particularly cuts to the safety net, and (3) pushing Wall Street’s greatest dream – the privatization of Social Security…

Joining with Reagan in trying to prevent the essential reregulation of the S&L industry started two unbroken patterns for the New Democrats. First, the policy differences that the New Democrats identify as separating themselves from the democratic-wing of the Democratic Party are all policies on which the New Democrats adopted the hard-right Republican position. Second, on those defining policies that New Democrats say separate themselves from other Democrats, the New Democrats’ policies have invariably proven dead wrong and extremely harmful to the public and (with a lag) the Democratic Party…

That’s right, the same Wall Street CEOs that corrupted the New Democrats and ruined the Democratic Party, caused devastating harm to America and Americans (and Iraqis), and led to the election of Donald Trump are here to “save” the Democratic Party. Specifically, Third Way had the audacity to say that it was investing in the DNC to “launch a campaign to help Democrats reconnect with the voters who have abandoned the party.” The voters who abandoned the Democratic Party did so because the New Democrats deliberately abandoned those voters decades ago in order to curry favor (and contributions) from Wall Street elites.