Not sure how Democrats recover from this thing no one without severe internet brain damage is aware of.
— DSA DNC Caucus (@agraybee) July 13, 2019
Chakrabarti and Trump both think they’ll benefit from a Democratic civil war
— Doremus Jessup (@DoremusJ) July 14, 2019
Since one of my self-imposed duties around here is finding the positive note… I did not foresee the Squatter-in-Chief and the Cosplay Socialists teaming up to convince wavering (non-‘base’) Republicans and ‘independents’ that Nancy Pelosi is Snake Plissken: A stone-cold killer, and yet their only real defense against the ravening hordes from urban hellholes like the Bronx, Detroit, Roxbury, and Minneapolis…
As CoS to @AOC, Saikat Chakrabarti is a new type: the movement chief of staff. Your boss is invested with the hopes of millions of Twitter followers, and your job involves both scheduling for the next week and planning for the ages. @Saikatc @aoc https://t.co/Nyjb8NKOar
— David Montgomery (@dmontyjr) July 10, 2019
I personally suspect this slobbery beat-sweetner first originated in the Sanders’ campaign sagging poll numbers. Chakrabarti and his running buddies started the “Justice Dems” when it became obvious that Bernie would release control of “Our Revolution” approximately six weeks after his death (and that’s assuming Jane can’t find a way to continue the grift work as a memorial to the fallen martyr). They’re not Democrats and they’re not interested in actual grubby politics — it’s all about Move Fast, Break Stuff, (personal) Profit!
He got lucky when he ‘discovered’ Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — she was, as I remember it, the only one of last cycle’s 17 or 18 Democrat-challenging JD candidates who actually won. But if she’s half as smart as she seems to be, she’ll find a quiet way to get this guy out of her staff offices, because a Chief of Staff who considers himself the starmaker / puppeteer for somebody’s kid sister is hardly an asset:
… In the spring of 2016 — even before Sanders conceded the primary race — Chakrabarti, Exley and other Sanders organizers, including Alexandra Rojas and Corbin Trent, were thinking of next steps for the movement. To enact change, they reasoned, it was vital to transform Congress. They formed a group called Brand New Congress with the mission to recruit hundreds of community leaders and working-class candidates to run on a vision of getting corporate money out of politics, tackling climate change, transforming the economy, providing health care for all, standing for racial justice and stemming mass incarceration. They sifted through more than 10,000 nominations to find the best recruits. “Our biggest criteria was, basically, find someone who had a chance to sell out and didn’t,” Chakrabarti says.
Ocasio-Cortez, who was then a bartender from the Bronx, was nominated by her brother. It was Isra Allison, another member of Brand New Congress, not Chakrabarti, who had a key initial recruiting interview with her. But Chakrabarti drove the overall effort… Nasim Thompson, who also helped recruit candidates, told me: “It was clear from the very beginning that the ship was moving with his guidance. … He was so focused that it naturally created a gravitational pull. … He was sort of relentless in that, and simultaneously just so pleasant, it was shocking. Almost not human. I used to say, ‘How do you stay so Zen?’ ”…
Late Night Open Thread: Much Ado, Weekend RoundupPost + Comments (36)