Politico is out with a report on the culture surrounding the “centrist” lobbying group No Labels, and it turns out that Nancy Jacobsen, Mark Penn’s wife, runs a toxic organization that hasn’t met an ass grabber that it doesn’t want to hire:
- There is lingering discord over the decision to hire and ally with individuals who left prior jobs under allegations they’d sexually harassed women.
- Two former staffers said they witnessed one of the organization’s few Black employees being singled out to discuss race issues at a staff meeting.
- At least three ex-aides have sought remuneration from the group over the nature of their termination in the last two years.
- Two female staffers recalled management telling female employees to dress more conservatively after a colleague was improperly touched by a male member of Congress at a No Labels event.
- Staffers are bombarded with emails and demands by Jacobson. They come at all hours of the day, sometimes with odd requests, such as changing the employer listed on their LinkedIn profiles to “America” to throw off a journalist trying to locate them.
As the piece points out, No Labels hired noted harassers Mark Halperin and former Rep. Tom Reed to aid in their quest to shit on Democrats. The whole thing would be terrible just for the employees and ex-employees of the place, if Jacobsen wasn’t raising a war chest of $70 million to bring her brand of centrist fuckery to the 2024 election.
Alison Rose
Why does this completely not surprise me. Fuckers.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
And it just illustrates how much misogyny motivates attacks on Democrats. It really is behind some of the freakout and run to the right from men (and some women) who would otherwise be left leaning.
pat
OT? Just want to leave a bit of good news. Pablo is on medication (Mirtazapine) that I can rub in his ear and it is absorbed through the skin and it stimulates his appetite and HE IS EATING!!
Back to the rants…..
Matt McIrvin
What it reminds me of are the reports years ago of terrible labor practices in Nader’s organization, which of course had progressive cachet but was also “post-partisan”.
Steeplejack
@pat:
Good news! 👍
Josie
@pat: What a relief for you – that he is eating and that the medicine can be applied so easily.
ETA: It’s ironic that they call themselves “no labels” when i can think of some appropriate labels that have nothing to do with democracy. Such as misogynistic, racist assholes.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@pat: Yay!
AM in NC
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: YES. YES. YES.
mr perfect
Mark Halperin. Were Bill O’Reilly and his falafel not available?
zhena gogolia
@pat: Great news! We kept our kitty going for several years with a medicine like that, not sure if it’s the same one.
Alison Rose
OT: The Respect for Marriage Act just cleared Congress, I saw a graphic showing a vote of 258 to 169, with 39 Repubs voting for it. Anyone know where I can see the roll call? Google isn’t helping and I’m curious to see which GOPers managed to dredge up a shred of a soul, at least temporarily.
WaterGirl
@pat: Oh, I’m so happy to hear that.
Fraud Guy
The only positive thing I can say about that $70 million is that a significant proportion of that money will never make it out of the organization’s leaders’ pockets.
Alison Rose
@pat: Yay! Also LOL that’s the anti-depressant I take. If it affects him the same way it did me, he’s gonna be SLEEEEEEEPY for a week or so. The first couple weeks I was on it, years ago, all day long I’d feel like I hadn’t slept in days.
Barbara
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: They don’t want to be seen as siding with forces for a more equitable society. That might threaten their own claims for influence. That’s why they basically told BLM protesters to stay home after George Floyd died. Let us deal with it in our own way, essentially. And yeah, hiring Halperin because he’s “brilliant” just shows, as if we didn’t already understand, that for a lot of people in power, misogyny is just, you know, a little peccadillo, like smoking — impolite, maybe inconsiderate, but not worth punishing anyone over.
And I guess I should not have been surprised to find out that Nancy Jacobson is Mark Penn’s wife.
Kent
The whole “no labels” thing is also a MASSIVE grift
Kay
I’m more interested in her second question- why “liberal” pundits were convinced of its power.
I spent quite a bit of time in Michigan this past year- not only did Tudor Dixon make it a centerpiece of her campaign, but Michigan Republicans attempted to make the abortion issue about trans people. It ALL flopped.
pat
@Alison Rose:
Interesting. I googled it and one of the side effects is… weight gain. It’s only been a few days, and he still has his kidney issues, but without this medication I don’t think he would have lasted till Christmas. So YAY for Pablo, just keep it up, OK?
ETA: Hard to tell if he is sleeping more than usual. Ha.
artem1s
There is a sense of tension in the organization because they need to scoop up all the low lying fruit before TFG and DeathSantis grifter train drains those donors of all their money. GOPer donors would be better served if they just handed their money over to Rick Scott. At least then they would know whose pocket the money is going to.
I’m putting the odds at about 20/80 they can’t agree on a candidate to put on the ballots for IA and NH primaries. All those donation are going to end up paying for lawsuits and lawyers and to hire upwardly failing white misogynistic racists sons of their country club pals. As always rooting for injuries.
Sister Golden Bear
@Alison Rose: Here’s a gift link to a WaPo article with the full list, plus a graphic/list showing which Repubs changed their votes from last time.
Barbara
@Kent: While curtseying at all the congratulations she receives for her dedication, as demonstrated by the fact that she doesn’t take a salary. (She does now, apparently.)
Kay
Someone gave No Labels 70 million dollars. We really have to raise taxes on the wealthy. They just burn money.
Alison Rose
@pat: Yeah, the weight gain thing was one of the reasons my psychiatrist at the time chose it for me, because I was also dealing with severe anorexia, and he thought the appetite stimulant part of it would help. It……did not, because anorexia isn’t about just not being hungry, LOL. But I’d bet for a pet, it would work quite well, since they love to eat anyway :)
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay: It may have been an electoral dud, but the escalating anti-trans, anti-gay violence is very, very real.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The trans athlete witch hunt was one of the few right-wing culture war klaxon issues where, in liberal spaces, you could still get a few self-identified liberal people to say “no, there’s a legitimate issue here”. I think it was good for tripping up comfortable people who like to argue about moral abstractions in a theoretical way. But I guess it was just not a priority for the median voter, or they smelled the bad faith.
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: Thanks!! Yeah, apparently a few jerks flipped from yes to no. Thanks for letting us know what trash you are, folks.
Kent
@Kay: As a teacher I’ve been through the trans kid bathroom wars at two different school districts. It is always a vanishingly small group of bitter old white parents who are looking for the last few acceptable outlets for their bigotry and hate. Trans kids is about all they have left since they lost on gay marriage and keeping gay people in the closet. And most people don’t actually live in terror of the Guatemalan kid who mows their lawn.
They know how to make a lot of noise. But they really don’t understand how much of a minority of a minority they actually are. And no one should ever be afraid of these bigots
Apparently we are now on to drag queen story hour or something
The actual problem is that the right wing media is so willing to platform this stuff.
Alison Rose
@Sister Golden Bear: Hm, wait–this is from the first version, with the 47 GOP supporters.
ETA Okay, looks like this might be the list:
Barbara
@Kay: If I had to guess, it’s that most people have some experience with sports teams through their kids, at least, and they must understand that we are talking about an infinitesimally small number of people. In other words, they finally found an issue that involved so few people in such outlier circumstances that people were truly baffled by the level of hysteria being directed at it — how in God’s name does that affect me or mine at all?
Jerry the Mac Guy
@Alison Rose: Here is the vote recorded today by the Clerk of the House of Representatives.
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2022513
Kay
@Kent:
We had one trans child at the high school here – that I’m aware of. A twin, and part of a huge Catholic extended family. I know two of the twins aunts. There was no controversy at school but the children’s father killed himself last year and some of the huge, Catholic extended family blamed the father’s death on the twin who came out – the theory was he was so distraught he killed himself, even though his wife, the twin’s mother, told people he had been depressed for decades. Just a horrifying thing to pin on an 18 year old.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Barbara:
That is it exactly! They were FLOORED by the Me Too movement. Suddenly, their awful behavior could have real consequences as it should have all along.
Kent
Most people understand the distinction between recreational youth sports and top level competitive and professional sports where hormone verification exists. That is why you don’t see some random guy in a tennis skirt winning the women’s title at Wimbledon.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Alison Rose: Ann Wagner is on that list? That is a surprise. I mean her district includes St. Louis County which is more purple, so maybe she feel like she has to moderate some of her stances? She has always opposed gay marriage. I mean this is a person who voted against even reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. She is normally atrocious.
Shalimar
@Fraud Guy: Michael Bloomberg spent $500 million of his own money in 2020 and only won the primary in American Samoa. $70 million is nothing for a presidential campaign.
Kent
@Kay: Most people are generally decent. In fact it often surprises me how much so.
I taught HS for 11 years at a big public school in Waco TX which I promise you is not some liberal mecca. Back around 2012 I had a student who was a big football star. His parents were a lesbian couple who were probably the loudest and most extreme members of the parent booster club and were the central queen bees of the parent section in the stands. They basically ran the show. This was a school that was a perennial big school title contender and had its own 10,000 seat stadium that frequently sold out for big games. I also had plenty openly-out gay students.
The percentage of people who are truly hateful bigots is, I think, pretty small. But they get amplified for political gain. And everyone seems to just go along.
Cameron
It’s probably due to my political ignorance, but all I can think of when I hear of an organization that calls itself “No Labels” is Groucho Marx: “Whatever it is, I’m against it!”
Ken
Very underpants gnomes.
(South Park reference.)
mrmoshpotato
We can safely assume it was a Rethuglican pig.
This is just sad. Just own up that you’re too chickenshit to call yourselves Rethuglicans.
ETA – my apologies to actual chicken shit for the comparison.
rikyrah
@pat:
Yeah👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Kent
The fraud is that they think there is actually a big centrist voting block in this country that is liberal on social issues like LGBT rights, but conservative on economic issues like tax cuts for the wealthy.
When it is much more likely that the opposite is true. Most of my rural MAGA relatives are probably happy to tax the wealthy and regulate big corporations but buy into culture war bullshit about how white Christians are being persecuted.
rikyrah
@Kay:
What liberals?
We just want you to leave trans children THE PHUCK ALONE😠
rikyrah
@Kay:
The abortion issue about trans folks? How?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kent:
Fixed it for you.
mrmoshpotato
@pat: Excellent news! So good to hear. (No pun intended.)
Kent
I lived through 13 years of politics in Texas. Abortion has ALWAYS been a proxy for racism and bigotry. ALWAYS.
I’m a middle aged white guy and I can’t tell you how many conservative white men have told me they vote GOP because it is “pro life” when I guaran-DAMN-tee you that exactly NONE of them gave a shit about abortion. They just intuitively knew that admitting they voted GOP because it was the “white” party (as it is in the south) is no longer really politically acceptable. But that they would automatically get a pass if they claimed some religious or moral position like being anti-abortion.
Second Amendment gun issues also works the same way. It gives them a free pass to vote for the most egregious and horrid GOPer because no one questions their integrity if they say they are pro-life or pro 2nd Amendment. We just accept that on face value
Now that Roe has actually been overturned it has sort of flipped things on its head. And they need some new fake issue to use to signal their virtue and use as their excuse to continue to vote for the racist party. They are sort of flailing around and trying out different other fig leaves like being anti-trans. But I don’t think it will work.
trollhattan
The only successful 3rd party presidential candidate of my lifetime is George Fucking Wallace, who won five states. Those states were subsequently handed to the Republicans for “safe keeping” with just Georgia seemingly rethinking it, 54 years later.
In our system, a successful third party is not happening and the Yangs of America are interested only in camera time and getting their paws in your pocket.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent:
In an ideal world, yes, but there are people with guns and bombs who are willing to kill on their say-so.
mrmoshpotato
@mr perfect:
Bill O’$32-million-of-sexual-harrassment is still trying to figure out grade-school-level tidal science.
Cameron
@rikyrah: Because, uh, it’s…woke, yeah, that’s it….woke and CRT! And..and…grooming…and….hey, if you have to ask, you’ll never know! Pwned again, libtard!
Kent
They are both proxies for racism. See my larger post above.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: I assume they file separate tax returns.
patrick II
What or who did the “centrist” No Labels spend 70 million on?
Kent
@mrmoshpotato: Who knows. But she lives in a house and lives off money that she has lifted from corporate donors and funneled to companies that her husband owns. So it doesn’t really make any difference.
It isn’t about their personal income anyway. It is about the income of the various separate entities they both control.
Cameron
@trollhattan: Some third parties have very attractive platforms, but they’re still not going anywhere. I chased after them for a while, before finally discovering a caucus within the Democratic Party that was actually closer to what I think than any of the minor parties. Guess I took the long way home.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
What? How?!
Barbara
@mrmoshpotato:
People rejecting their God given gender roles? Yes, it’s bizarre.
oldster
Those of us who know Former Congressman Tom Reed from his days in Upstate New York, and from his days as a founding member of the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus*, will not be surprised to hear that the alcoholic, misogynist abuser has wound up getting his paws on this scam.
*”Here’s our problem: we’re right-wing thugs and people hate our platform of low taxes on the rich and fuck everyone else. How can we solve this problem? Maybe if we co-opt a few really lousy Dems who are also in the pocket of the moneyed few, and then we can pretend to be bipartisan? Problem solved!!!”
Fake Irishman
@Alison Rose:
Go to House.gov and they should have it up within 24 hours or so. 40 GOPers voted to send the original House bill over to the Senate, so 39 sounds about right.
Daoud bin Daoud
@Kent: You publicize the RWNJs you have, not the RWNJs you wish you had.
TerryTime
@rikyrah: They ran radio ads against Proposal 3 (abortion rights) saying the most over the top anti-trans shit. It actually said “Joe Biden wants to cut off your daughter’s breasts”.
Kent
In every single democracy you have to build a majority through compromise. Every single one.
In parliamentary systems the voters get to stay pure and all the compromise happens during the process of building a coalition government. So it is one step further removed from the voters.
In our winner-take-all presidential system, the coalitions are built at the party level through the primary process. Candidates have to appeal to a majority of voters. So the compromise actually happens one step closer to the voters than in a parliamentary system.
What makes the US less responsive to political will and generally more susceptible to political logjams and gridlock is NOT our system of parties and winner-take-all voting. It is all the built-in veto points such as the filibuster and activist Supreme Court and the fact that one party has to win a trifecta to achieve a governing majority. And other peripheral issues like our system of campaign finance.
Geminid
@Alison Rose: I notice that 9 out of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump the second time are on the list. Only two, David Valdeo (CA) and Newhouse (WA) won reelection. Three retired and four were primaried out.
Jen Kiggans, the woman who beat fellow Navy vet Elaine Luria (VA-2), did not make the list. I thought perhaps she would, but I remember that her district has a lot of churchy Republicans. Pat Robertson’s University is based there and has its own political machine that produced ex-Governor Bob McDonnell. Kiggans may want to stay in the bible thumpers’ good graces for 2024. They say a new Representative’s first reelection contest is the toughest and Kiggans will need those votes.
And Illinois 13th CD Congressman Rodney Davis voted in favor! I think Watergirl is going to miss ol’ Rodney more than she lets on.
Fake Irishman
@Fake Irishman:
…and I see the folks further up in the thread have already covered this
more comprehensively than I do. Please ignore me and continue your discussion.
mrmoshpotato
@Barbara: I guess… These miserable bastards really need to get some hobbies that don’t involve shitting all over vulnerable people.
Old School
On Michigan/trans people/abortion:
WaterGirl
@Geminid:
That piece of shit voted yes? Maybe he got confused and thought that voting yes means YES WE WON’T LET THEM GET MARRIED?
I think not!
On my vehicle for more than 4 years.
trollhattan
@Cameron: Same. When I was but a young voter person I pursued shiny bugs as the parties seemed impossibly distant from what interested or impacted me.
Because the Republicans went batshit nuts and suddenly had zero interest ANYthing I cared about, I drifted towards the Democratic side of things with time, the occasional John Anderson type effort, notwithstanding.
My lack of adequate imagination had me thinking Reagan represented the sub-basement of Republicanism. Little did I suspect…
piratedan
@TerryTime: We saw some of those outliers too in AZ during the last election. Fronted by the Dark money outfit ludicrously named Citizens for Sanity.
Just the serious Male narrative voice layered over suggestive imagery.
Eljai
Okay, I am frequently wrong, so grain of salt and all, but I don’t see republican primary voters going for Larry Hogan or Mike Pompeo. And I don’t see Hogan or Pompeo running as independents. So, if No Labels wants to light their money on fire, I’m okay with that.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear: It really freakin’ enrages me that so many people I know, who could never ever STFU about: M4All, GND, Defund/AbolishThePolice, Student Loans, The Rail Strike, TheDNC!!1! etc. aren’t bringing any of that same energy to these horrific acts of terrorism and state laws targeting LGBTQ (Especially “T”) People.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent:
The reason the illusion gets traction is that these people do exist in a well-off professional social stratum that has an outsize media voice. That exaggerates their numbers, which are actually quite small. But they imagine that they are the Great American Center.
Betty
@Sister Golden Bear: I see that Glenn Thompson who recently attended his gay son’s wedding continues to be a no vote. What a creep.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@pat:
Awesome news!
OverTwistWillie
The litany of GOP campaign “issues” would have kicked Democratic asses up and down the ticket……… if it was 1994.
H.E.Wolf
@Alison Rose:
Thanks for posting the list from The Daily Signal.
Note: They made at least one error. Jamie Herrera Beutler, listed as Ore. [sic], is the departing Republican US Rep. in WA-03, who lost her 2022 primary election to a right-wing nutjob. The seat flipped to Democratic in November thanks to Balloon Juice favorite Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
Geminid
@H.E.Wolf: Herrera Butler was one of the 10 House Impeachers. She, Tom Rice (SC), Peter Meijer (MI), and Liz Cheney (WY) lost primaries. Four others retired.
Herrera Butler did not advance from her district’s jungle primary. Two other Impeachers, Valdeo and Newhouse ran in jungle primary states and were able to win reelection.
cain
@Barbara: I think they should really be worried about the hidden werewolf population who probably have unfair advantage in sports. Hey I know – I saw Teen Wolf tv series. It’s a legitimate issue.
PAM Dirac
@Geminid:
She hasn’t been sworn in yet, has she?
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Plenty of Democrats win in purple states and districts with backing from Independent voters. I never heard that Third Way helped them. I don’t know if the organization even supports actual candidates. It seems to me to be an advocacy organization that takes money from elites and then tries to influence the broader discourse among elites.
I remember the focus group of ostensible Biden/Youngkin voters Third Way publicized after last year’s election. I thought it had very little value beyond justifying that organization’s existence.
Geminid
@PAM Dirac: Thank you for pointing this out. Sloppy work on my part.
That’s a vote Kiggans is probably glad she missed out on. She’ll have plenty more next year, though that she’ll wish she could skip. The Republican caucus’s legislative program is going to seem like it was designed to cost purple district Republicans their seats, and I think it will.
Kay
@rikyrah:
They ran ads saying that proposal 3, the abortion rights amendment, authorized children to receive gender-affirming medical care without their parents consent.
The first time I heard it on the radio I thought I misunderstood, that there was another proposal on the ballot. Nope. They meant 3.
The yard signs were like..cryptic. They said something like “Proposal Three- confusing and radical” – they were speaking exclusively to the GOP base.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
Do you think the prospect of a recession next year could alter this? It seems inflation wasn’t enough in many places to sway enough voters to the GOP side in this year’s midterms
Brachiator
@Kent:
This may be true, even though I doubt it. But the main thing is that the GOP does not care. They have been thoroughly bought off by the plutocrats. And the MAGA crowd are unwilling to vote for Democrats. They are willing to go along with the tax cuts.
My own view is that the MAGA crowd accept big tax cuts for the wealthy as long as they get a small cut for themselves.
ian
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I would like to point out for the record that economists kept saying one was going to happen this year. They were wrong, the figures showed growth, albeit not strong enough to outweigh inflation. But this information shows these forecasters are not always correct.
If a recession does happen next year, we will most likely be recovered by the time 2024 rolls around. This will minimize the impact on elections that won’t be held for another 23 months.
I would also add one more factor: with all the “bad” economic news people kept hearing about on television, it ultimately did not sway the outcome of the 2022 election. We may be at a point with partisanship that most voters are going to vote for their party preferences, come hell or high water.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
How do popular government programs like Social Security and Medicare figure in?
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): A recession next year won’t effect voting in 2024 unless it’s a deep one. But I’m not sure there will even be a recession next year.
PAM Dirac
@Geminid:
It is going to be interesting to see how much the purple district republicans will put up with. I suspect not a hell of a lot. For example I can’t see them voting for a debt default. The vote on the marriage bill also suggests that enough Rs will join the Ds that the worst of the crazy’s agenda won’t go through. I suspect the orange fart cloud’s 2023 will be worse than his 2022 and that also might free up a lot of purple district Rs to bring at least a small measure of sanity to the House.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: Wait, wait, wait – the Republican congressional caucus actually *has* a legislative agenda? Beyond “all the BS Investigations all the time because”, that is?
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Now, don’t get all misty on us.
Jackie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Americans, while concerned about inflation, recession, food and gas prices, voted for democracy.
The potential loss of democracy is a *forever* concern, as apposed to economic fluctuations.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Good question. The GOP works hard to try to undermine these programs, but voters resist this. But I don’t know if the MAGA crowd would abandon the GOP if the succeeded in cutting back Social Security and Medicare.
However, I know that many jackals discount Independent voters, but this group is real and will vote for Democrats when the GOP go too far.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jackie:
I agree! I noted that was the case in my comment. Hopefully, if there is one, it won’t matter by Nov 2024
@ian:
@Geminid:
Thanks for the explanations
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
I think you’re right. It’s sad that MAGA voters would not break with the GOP over something they directly benefit from. Many of them, like many Americans, have no savings to speak of so rely heavily on these programs
WaterGirl
@Geminid: ha!
Scout211
Trump does not plan to appeal the 11th circuit court decision.
Kent
@Brachiator: The point is that people who are conservative socially but liberal economically are probably a much larger “centrist” voting block than the opposite.
While the socially liberal/economically conservative niche is occupied by the wealthy elites who support “no labels”, the number of ordinary voters who meet that description is much smaller. Tax hikes for the 1% and propping up Social Security are very popular and much more popular than their opposite policies.
Ruckus
@Kay:
A lot of religious leaders, not all of them, think that their job/life’s work is to bring as many sheep within the walls of the religion they practice. Some of the ones that do this think that it is vital that any desertion has to be squashed to keep as many followers as possible in order to prove the concept of their religion/calling. Try to fit in in a small town without attending church. You might, but it’s more likely you will be shunned. A lot of people who religiously (had to use it) believe in their church believe that someone outside it has ulterior motives of living. That becomes more obvious in a small town.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Rethuglican concepts rarely have any sense of logic. If the rethuglicans had any logical conceptions they likely wouldn’t be rethuglicans.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Ronnie was a shithead but not near as big of one as any of today’s rethuglicans. Mainly because they keep losing unless they can find a way to legally force their shitty laws on everyone else, which they did by getting SFB elected so that they could get shitty not so supreme court judges anointed. So now they have enraged just a few too many of the opposition-that’s us. I’ve been told that continuously stepping on one’s genitals with golf spikes on is not all that good for one’s self, which seems obvious but I’d bet not much is obvious to SFB and his ilk.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent:
Yes, and this is something that “dirtbag left” types actually understand. What they don’t understand is that it isn’t possible to get them to vote Democratic (or Socialist or whatever) by just going easy on civil rights and cultural liberalism. They care a LOT more about the hot-button identity issues than about their pocketbooks and the right will make sure to put that front and center whether we do or not.