Five thoughts on the recording of Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer:
Please work with me as I start at an unexpected place.
1) Given Russia’s capacities they could easily be recording politicians, elected officials, and political operatives conversations phone all the time. Given Russia’s current behavior it is highly likely they will now be releasing them at strategic moments in campaigns. (Note: The article says the recording was done by the candidate, but having been a Cassandra within Democratic activists for over a year on this point this article should demonstrate what a phone microphone can do and there is a very good reason phones are not allowed into Federal government secure spaces).
2) This type of behavior by the Democratic House leadership and the DCCC is the exact reason Democrats keep losing. It leads to bad candidates that were picked in DC, not locally. And if these candidates do end up winning it leads to the Democratic majorities they are part of not addressing the life threatening problems people face. This results in depressing future turnout as people feel it won’t matter to vote since it isn’t going to address the life threatening crisis they face (police violence, deportation of a loved one, economic dislocation, and climate change).
3) The candidates the Democratic leadership and the DCCC are trying to defeat are not some outside agitators trying to destroy the party, but long time party activists with deep roots inside the party who recognize the life threatening crisis that corporations and old white dudes don’t want us to solve. The candidate the DCCC is trying to defeat in this article is the grandson of longtime Congressman and House Foreign Relations Committee Chair Tom Lantos and himself was an Obama appointee. The DCCC did similar to Laura Moser (whose husband was Obama’s videographer) and my friend Derrick Crowe (who had worked for three members of Congress including Nancy Pelosi and has been a leading progressive activist for over a decade).
4) This behavior is tearing the party up inside.
5) Every person currently wanting to replace Nancy Pelosi as speaker are much further to the right than she is, so please keep that in mind if your initial response is the need to replace party leadership. The situation is much more nuanced. We definitely need a change in party behavior, but I would say that should be done by electing as many progressives to the House as possible so they have a voting block that would support Nancy as speaker in exchange for taking control of the DCCC.
