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**MAY 18, 2022**

Dem Voters Want Dem Pols Who Do Things

ALEXANDER SAMMON

The Joe Manchin wing of the party lost big on Tuesday.

Tuesday's primary elections were defined by historic super PAC
spending attempting to quash a number of progressive candidates and an
attempted hostile takeover of the Democratic primary process like
we've never seen. At last count, just a handful of super PACs had
dumped $18 million to influence the outcome in favor of moderates.

The expectation in politics is that the person with the most money wins.
And that played out in several races Tuesday night. In numerous races,
massive super PAC money backed moderate candidates with institutional
endorsements and little enthusiasm. But surprisingly, progressives
largely won the argument that voters want to see their representatives
fighting for an agenda rather than fighting to stop it. The candidates
most tied to trying to slam the brakes on progress were defeated. The
candidates who organized their communities in favor of getting things
done for the people were successful. And in one incredible instance,
voters saw through the hollowness of millions of outside dollars.

The night's early returns were headlined by the triumph of
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman over moderate House Rep. Conor Lamb
for the state's Democratic Senate nomination. Fetterman was expected
to win, but did so resoundingly, winning every single county while holed
up in a hospital bed recovering from pacemaker surgery.

Fetterman is a bit of an unorthodox progressive candidate. He's
championed a $15 minimum wage, weed legalization, Medicare for All, and
higher taxes on the rich. He's also embraced Title 42, the immigration
policy that the Trump administration enacted to turn away asylum seekers
using COVID as a pretense, and pledged to support Israel.

The latter decision likely kept some of the massive super PAC spending
from AIPAC's United Democracy Project PAC and Democratic Majority for
Israel PAC out of the race. Still, Lamb benefited from millions of
dollars in super PAC spending thanks to Penn Progress, a super PAC
composed primarily of financial titans and set up specifically to buoy
his candidacy, despite the fact that Lamb has previously condemned

corporate money in elections.

Fetterman also identified himself as a vocal opponent of the filibuster,
and the regime of obstructionism that has come to define Joe Biden's
first term as president. Lamb, meanwhile, who had a not-insignificant
record of voting against the party and a close personal relationship
with Sen. Joe Manchin, the filibuster's Democratic face, was unable to
make the case that he would be a Democrat who would actually advance the
Democratic agenda.

In House races in Pennsylvania, progressives also won out. In a
low-profile race that brought zero outside spending, former Bernie
Sanders delegate Chris Deluzio won easily over moderate Sean Meloy in
Pennsylvania's 17th District. That seat is currently held by Lamb, who
has long claimed that his political canniness in voting against
Democratic legislative priorities made him the only Democrat who could
win in that district. Now, Lamb could be replaced by a progressive.

Pennsylvania's 12th, meanwhile, was anything but a low-profile
contest. Thirty-four-year-old progressive Summer Lee eked out the
narrowest of victories over Steve Irwin, a corporate lawyer whose firm
engaged in union-busting campaigns. Just a handful of weeks ago, the
race looked like a laugher, with Lee up 25 points. Then, AIPAC began
blanketing the airwaves with at least $2.7 million in attack ads, while
DMFI PAC chipped in another $400,000, bringing the margin of victory to
near-zero. Because of Lee's exceptional organization and ground game
,
and experience running against the Pennsylvania machine in a race just
four years ago, she was able to pull it out.

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In Oregon, massive super PAC spending on behalf of Democratic
obstructionists was also unsuccessful. The race in the Fifth District
has yet to be called, but Jamie McLeod-Skinner looks to have defeated
incumbent Kurt Schrader, the Democratic representative best known for
voting down President Biden's extremely popular drug pricing reform
legislation (or for calling the impeachment of Donald Trump after
January 6, 2021, a "lynching"). McLeod-Skinner consistently called
Schrader "the Joe Manchin of the House," and was fond of saying that
running to Schrader's left just made her a normal Democrat. Voters
once again punished obstruction, in the form of Schrader.

Mainstream Democrats PAC, which operates closely with DMFI PAC, renting
office space from the organization and paying it for web hosting, spent
at least $800,000 on Schrader's behalf, who also benefited from
pharma-funded ads; he was even endorsed by the president
.
Still, McLeod-Skinner looks positioned to have won out over the
pharmaceutical industry's favored candidate, whose campaign was
alleged to have been run by the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee.

In the Sixth District next door, Protect Our Future PAC, a super PAC
associated with crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, put up more than
$11 million for Carrick Flynn, a relative no-namer in an open seat.
Crypto PACs are a new entrant into Democratic electioneering, and this
race marked the PAC's biggest investment. It was matched by $1 million
in spending from the party's own House Majority PAC, a move that
enraged local Democrats and confused national ones.

Yet Flynn lost to Medicare for All supporter Andrea Salinas, and it
wasn't close. If anything, the massive amount of spending backfired on
the neophyte candidate, turning off voters.

Super PAC spending proved much more effective in North Carolina, where
AIPAC's United Democracy Project and DMFI PAC teamed up to take down
two progressive women of color in the state's First and Fourth
Districts. In the first, Erica Smith lost by a margin of nearly 2-to-1
to Don Davis, who got at least $2.3 million in spending out of UDP PAC
and another $500,000 from DMFI. Davis, endorsed by retiring Rep. G.K.
Butterfield, looks set to become the most anti-abortion Democrat in
House, after repeatedly voting with the state's Republicans to defund
Planned Parenthood and other anti-choice measures. That could prove a
messaging nightmare for a party that will be running on the Supreme
Court's strike-down of Roe v. Wade in the fall.

In NC-04 as well, progressive Nida Allam was beaten by Valerie Foushee,
who benefited from millions in spending from UDP, DMFI PAC, and Protect
Our Future PAC. In fact, AIPAC was responsible for such an overwhelming
percentage of Foushee's fundraising that it led to an outcry from
local Democrats. Local news outlet The Assembly chronicled
the
shocking development, noting that, in early May, the race had "more
spending from outside groups

than any state primary for U.S. House in either party." Considering
that array of spending, Allam fared decently, losing by around nine
points, or 8,000 votes. But the Ohio model
for
purging progressives continues to work for big-money interests.

Indeed, super PAC spending remains the top story of Tuesday's
elections, even if those PACs didn't win across the board. For the ten
years since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision legalized the
infinite spending of ostensibly "independent" super PACs, Democrats
have broadly signaled support for campaign finance reform that would
rein that system in. In recent years, many progressives and even
moderates have eschewed corporate PAC donations in favor of small-dollar
donations in powering their campaigns. Now, that moderation has
disappeared, and super PAC spending has taken over the Democratic
primary process. Most of the high-profile progressive incumbents,
including all of the Squad, have yet to have their elections. The final
spending totals will be massive.

If Democrats had managed to get either of their democracy reform bills
passed, this situation would likely look very different. Stricter
prohibitions on collaboration between super PACs and candidates would
have been enacted, and it's likely those PACs would have been less
inclined to be so brazen in their attempts to buy political office. But
thanks to a handful of Democratic obstructionists and embrace of the
filibuster, those bills never passed. Perhaps most troublingly, no one
in Democratic leadership has spoken up to condemn this trend, which has
seen unfettered spending targeting progressives, particularly women of
color. In fact, many of the candidates receiving this support also got
institutional endorsements, from retiring incumbents, House leadership,
or the president himself.

Adding a smattering of Democratic House reps to the caucus who won
thanks to the absence of meaningful regulations will only make it harder
for the caucus to enact the campaign finance reforms they've long
sought.

But Tuesday's results showed that money isn't all that counts in
elections. Big spending matters, but the progressive policy vision
continues to excite voters enough to overcome major fundraising
deficits, and with just two major primary days in the books, the Squad
already looks poised to add two members. Progressives look competitive
both in open seats and in primaries, both of which will be critical to
shaping the Democratic caucus for years to come. Meanwhile, the
do-nothing moderate brand looks exceedingly weak. That could spell
trouble for other high-profile obstructionists like Henry Cuellar in
Texas, who has his hotly contested runoff with progressive Jessica
Cisneros next week.

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Anti-Union Consultants Have No Place in the Democratic Party

Global Strategy Group is a good case study of the type of PR and
advisory firm the Democrats could do without. BY MAX MORAN, REVOLVING
DOOR PROJECT

Fed Nominee Michael Barr Discloses 82 Different Fintech Investments

Several of them involve startups in crypto, just as the products are
crashing and the need for regulation is more acute than ever. BY DAVID
DAYEN

Fake Populism vs. Real Populism

Will voters see through the phony kind and give true economic populists
a hearing? BY ROBERT KUTTNER

Hell in Amy's Kitchen

The 'socially responsible' company downplays the flood of complaints
from its largely Latina workforce, but has paid over $100,000 to OSHA
for multiple health and safety violations. BY JAROD FACUNDO

The Case Against Popularism

Alex Pareene explains the problems with the latest fad theory for
winning elections. BY PROSPECT STAFF

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