Hello. I've gathered all of you this
very small room to talk to all of you about the list of 'suggestions' you've
submitted be part of our agenda for the upcoming session.
(Puts paper into shredding machine)
Let's be clear. You are now
representatives of Congress, elected officials and Democrats. You're now loyal
to America, your district and the party. The idea that my party should listen
to a dozen, what's the woke term, nuts and make the agenda of Congress
something that can't get out of committee and the current President will never
sign is a waste of everybody's time. You want to make a show of it on C-SPAN?
Go ahead. I'm sure the Republicans will be fine with that. But you're elected
representatives, not activists. Act like it.
(After several minutes of shouting)
Oh, take a chill pill. Frankly you
should count your blessings we're even talking to you. There are, last I
counted, less than 12 of you in the House of Representatives. Ohio has a
bigger delegation in Congress than you guys do in all 50 states. And somehow you
think you're the voice of the people?
To be clear this conversation's a long
time coming. Honestly we should have had it after Biden's election but we were
dealing with other things. You know, like trying to run the country and govern
responsibly. And by the way, thanks for not helping during that
period. Voting against Biden's
infrastructure bill after we compromised with the Senate really made us look
good in the eyes of an America who voted for us because they wanted a return to
sanity.
Look I know our party doesn't have a
reputation for it – hell, we let you guys become members – but we want to win
elections and make government policy.
And let's be clear when the Justice Democrats were launched after the
2016 election we were rooting for you guys. We'd gotten our asses handed to us
by Trump and we wanted to regain power in the next election. It had nothing to
do with Trump so much as that's what political parties do. I'm not sure you
guys understand that basic concept.
So our mistake was giving 'the Squad'
so much publicity after 2018. I'll admit we were stunned when AOC beat Dan
Howley and maybe that explains our reaction. We've never been known for great
judgment and I guess we seized on you four because we thought you'd help us
take back the White House and Congress in 2020.
Honestly we should have been paying
more attention. After the 2018 election two of the founders of the party Kyle
Kulinski and Celenk Uygur were gone criticizing it for 'falling short in cultivating a unified
cohort of legislators able to champion priority bills'. And if that didn't
drive the point home Uygur would file to run for Congress in November 2019 and
he stated he didn't want your help. That should have been a bigger sign.
We were so focused on the four of you
who won, we ignored the 71 of you who lost. And I'm not talking about the
primaries. I'm talking about those of you who lost in the general in 2018.
Let's go through your 'greatest hits:
Audrey Denney and Ammar Campa-Najjar
in the California 1st and 50th. Lost.
Stephany Rose Spaulding, Colorado 5th
district, ran unopposed. Got less than 40 percent in the general.
Sanjay Patel, Florida 8th,
ran unopposed in the primary. Got less than 40 percent in the general.
James Thompson, Kansas 4th.
40 percent in the general.
Matt Morgan and Rob Davidson in the
Michigan 1st and 2nd. Both of them ran unopposed. Both
were beating by nearly 15 points.
Jamie Schoolcraft, Missouri 7th.
30 percent in the general.
Jess King, unopposed in the
Pennsylvania 11th. 41 percent in the general.
Vanessa Adia, unopposed in the Texas
12th. Barely got a third of the vote in the general.
Randy Bryce Wisconsin 1st.
42 percent in the general.
To drive the point home every time you
won a primary in a seat that was either competitive or red, you guys lost. And
lost badly. So in 2018, you did nothing to help us regain the House
majority. You changed some of the faces in our delegation but that was it.
None of you could win a Senate
primary, certainly not Paula Jean Swearengin in West Virginia. So let's go to
the governors races. Christine Halquist won with your blessing in Vermont and
Ben Jealous did in Maryland. Halquist got humiliated by incumbent Phil Scott
and Jealous got blown out by Larry Hogan. So in two of the bluest states in
America, the Justice Democrats couldn't win the governorship.
There's a complicated term for that in
politics. It's called 'losers'.
Now to your credit you seem to have
learned that fact the next time out and you only backed 10 new candidates. It
must have hurt when Bernie made it clear he didn't want your endorsement for
President.
Anyhow by now it was clear you were
only focused on districts you could win and you only tried two more that were
competitive. Georgette Gomez in the California 53rd and Kara Eastman
in the Nebraska 2nd. Eastman was the tell; she'd run in that
district two years earlier and lost in the general. She lost again, this time
getting 46 percent of the vote compared to 49 percent last time. Gomez only got
40 percent of the vote.
Two years later we gave you one last
chance as Odessa Kelly ran unopposed under your endorsement in the Tennessee 7th.
She got 38 percent of the vote. That's the last time you've tried to run in a
district that wasn't deep blue.
By that time we'd stop looking for you
to help us defeat Republicans and started looking for people who could. This
was harder then it should have been because the right has done a great job
convincing undecided and working class voters that every single member of the
Democratic Caucus in both hoses is AOC or Elizabeth Warren – even those who are
white, cis males.
We actually found some in the 2018
election, Democrats who could win in districts Trump carried. By the way 'DINO'
is really more of an effective nickname for you guys then it is for Tom Suozzi
and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. And they
should get more credit. They managed to convince people who voted for Trump to
vote for them. You still can't convince people who voted for Hilary or Biden
to vote for you most of the time.
And yet, perhaps because you seem to
believe Fox News is gospel, you decided that you represented 'the people'. Not
just the Democratic Party or even the House. "The people'. I grant you our party doesn't have the
greatest track record when it comes to winning over the working class or swing
voters, but its better than 'zero', which after five straight elections are the
number of seats you've flipped from Republican to Democrat. I know some of you
think math is a tool of oppression but 'some' is always going to be more than 'none'.
After the disaster that was 2024 both
our party made a deep dive to try and field candidates in all 50 states by the
start of the midterms. Your director said you were going to do the same thing.
The difference is by the start of 2026 we'd actually managed to do that – and
you'd convinced fourteen people to run in eleven states. Actually twelve. You
got Nida Allam and Cori Bush to run again for seats they'd already lost.
Some people might have finally
gotten the message after five straight cycles of out and out failing to
convince Democratic voters, never mind the electorate, that your agenda was the
one that the masses wanted. But I guess you're more like us then you think, in
that no one's ever accused you of making sane choices. You decided you could convince the masses you
were on your side by never talking to half of them ever again. Seriously some
of you make us miss Marjorie Taylor Greene. At least by the end she was showing
some signs of sanity.
Oh sure, you managed to the great
successes in a few primaries but you didn't do anything to help us grow our
majority. No you decided the best way to help the Democratic Party in the
midterms was to run in districts Republicans weren't even contesting. Yes I'm
looking at you Chris Rabb. Big help in Pennsylvania this cycle. We could have
done it without you and it might have been easier if we had.
We've been too polite the last few
cycles. We've given you chance after chance to convince the electorate they
want you have to sell. They don't. You can shout and scream all you want about
us losing in 2024 because we didn't stress Gaza enough. To be very clear we were trying to win
Michigan and Wisconsin, which are in the Midwest, not in the Middle
East. I know you guys think the world revolves around every word you say
but it never did. They rejected your
agenda when you were mild on Israel in 2018, you really think they'd be
more inclined to hear you when you've basically made it part of your platform
that Congress should vote to dissolve Israel?
By the way Representatives Valdez and
Chevalier Congress doesn't have that power. It never did. I'm beginning to
think most of you ran for Congress without having the slightest idea how
government works. I know you believe in the damn magic lantern theory that
basically says Presidents can press buttons and will policy into agenda and
that basically proves that you spent your entire time in college protesting and
didn't go to a single Government and Politics class.
If the President had that power, well,
he wouldn't be a king. He'd be God. And since you guys spent so much time
arguing against the former and think organized religion is a hoax I don't think
you spent a moment in your life that wasn't on your cell phone. You might as
well use your degrees for toilet paper for all you got from your educations.
So this is how things are going to
work in this cycle and for the foreseeable future. You can say whatever you
want to the media or your followers, make all the videos you want. Go nuts on
college campuses saying your speaking to the people. But when we want you to
vote on any agenda, you shut your mouths and do it. That's what party unity is.
The Republicans have put that to an art form. Part of the reason we've had
trouble winning voters is because we can't control our nuts as well as
they can control theirs.
If you were so anti-establishment, you
shouldn't have decided to run for one of the biggest in America. We're here to
try and make the government work in an era when people believe – rightfully –
that it's broken. And trust me when I tell you this, in eight years you've done
absolutely nothing to either help us fix it or even give the impression you
want too.
You don't like that? There's the door.
You can quit anytime. And if you don't want our help in the next election,
we're fine taking away our endorsement and our money. If the people are with
you, as you claim they are, then you don't need such illusionary things. You'll easily be able to win against the
Republicans in your district – or you know if we choose to primary you. And we
do have a track record of doing that. Ask Jamaal Bowman. Ask Cori Bush.
The alternative is that you find a way
to convince the masses that your agenda is popular. And that means being able
to flip a district that's red or even purple.
And those of you in New York might want to keep in mind that Zohran
didn't go anywhere near Long Island when he was trying to reshape the party in
New York. (And by the way Tom Suozzi and Laura Ryan want to make it very clear
they're not returning his calls for a reason.)
It's a big country. There's lot of
places for you to prove you can. The fact that you've completely failed in all
of your attempts shouldn't discourage you. After all you have Democrat as part
of you name for a reason.
That concludes our meeting. I'm sure
you have lots of speaking engagements on college campuses or hundred dollar a
plate dinners in which you're the featured speaker of why capitalism is a
sucker's game to attend. Don't worry. After all, being a hypocritical is a job
requirement in this town. We just pass legislation in our spare time.
Author's Note: While this is a satire,
all of the names of defeated Justice Democrat candidates are real ones, as are
the percentage of how badly they lost in their races between 2018 and 2022. All
of them were found out by a one minute google search – something that its clear
to me very few people in the media have done at any point in the last eight
years.
Another reminder to do your homework.
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