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5 Signs Democrats Are Headed Back To Top-Heavy Brunch And Ramping Inequality

5 Signs Democrats Are Headed Back To Top-Heavy Brunch And Ramping Inequality

Brunch Democrats
Brunch Democrats: 3 Signs Democrats Are Headed Back To Top-Heavy Brunch And Ramping Inequality. Photo: President-elect Joe Biden gestures to supporters Nov. 7, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)/Photo: Vice President-elect Kamala Harris speaks Nov. 7, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)/Photo: Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman is interviewed at the New York Stock Exchange Nov. 2, 2015. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Some are worried that a Joe Biden administration will be top-heavy with the brunch Democrats. 

Urban Dictionary defines brunch Democrats as those who are upper-middle class or rich who care more about being mildly inconvenienced by not being able to go to brunch than they do about people who aren’t as well off as them.

The term “brunch Democrats” originated during the Women’s March on Washington in 2017, where several white women held up signs that said “If Hillary were president, we’d be at brunch.”

“In American politics you can be one of three people: The millionaire, The poor Republican/Democrat, or the Brunch Democrat. No one likes the Brunch Democrat.”

Urban Dictionary

Twitter user Ronak posted this about the brunch Democrats: “now that Biden won, its time to go back to BRUNCH B – broken healthcare system R – rampant systemic racism & inequality U – underfunded federal programs N – not enough to fight climate change C – continuation of neoliberalism H – holding back progressive policies and real change”

Here are five signs that Democrat Democrats are headed back to top-heavy brunch and ramping inequality.

1. Republicans and big business in Cabinet

Biden has been consistent about forming a coalition of people from both sides of the aisle. That doesn’t sound like a bad approach to reach his “unity” goals, but according to progressives, it might be risky. 

“In addition to having more than a decade of corporatists running domestic policy to the detriment of everyday Americans, we also need to confront a generation of unhinged militarism and mass illegal unconstitutional surveillance,” said David Segal, the executive director of Demand Progress, a liberal advocacy group, according to Politico. “There are relatively few people from either party who are likely to be great on those issues…But to the extent that there are those people, they’re in the Democratic party.”

Of course, Biden wouldn’t be the only incoming president to include politicians from the opposing party in his cabinet. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all did the same. 

Still, in today’s contentious political climate, it is thought that Republicans might block any progressive policies Biden may attempt to pass. 

“My primary concern is that he involves people in the Cabinet who push back against corporate power and support a massive economic stimulus and the broad provision of health care,” Segal said. “Unfortunately, there are no prominent Republicans I know of who are on board with that agenda.”

Among the possible picks for Biden Cabinet posts are Meg Whitman, the CEO of Quibi and former CEO of eBay, and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both of whom spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, Politico reported. Also reportedly in the running are Massachusetts GOP Gov. Charlie Baker, former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), and former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.).

Political commentator and journalist David Sirota tweeted, “literally no voting bloc in America went to the polls demanding Republican Meg Whitman be given a Cabinet job as a reward for her HP layoffs and Quibi disaster”.

2. Swamp lobbyists are already meeting with Biden

Another worrisome sign to progressives is that the president elect seems to be welcoming lobbyists into the next White House administration. Biden’s advisors have already started holding Zoom meetings with lobbyists.

Many lobbyists have been letting their clients know that they expect to have a strong relationship with a potential Biden administration. One reason is that Biden’s campaign chairman, Steve Ricchetti, is a former lobbyist. Ricchetti has been mentioned as a potential candidate for White House chief of staff. In addition, Biden’s transition team allows the inclusion of lobbyists. 

“The message is you will have a much more predictable and traditional policy making process,” said Matthew Epperly, a managing director at lobbying firm Chartwell Strategy Group, told CNBC. “So when you are making a domestic policy advocacy campaign you can do it more of a ground up approach through the agencies and make your way into the White House.” 

3. Blaming ‘defund police’ and socialism for weakness

Republicans successfully portrayed all Congressional Democrats as socialists and radical leftists who endorse far-left ideas such as defunding the police, according to multiple people who were on the call and spoke anonymously, Washington Post reported.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) warned Democrats on Thursday that they will blow their chances in the Georgia runoff if they swing too far left, ProPublica reported.

Biden Democrats are more than cautious when it comes to defunding the police.

Longtime Congressman Rep. James Clyburn is warning the Democrats about moving ahead with a police defunding policy as well as the concerns of Black Lives Matters.

Clyburn, the House majority whip who played a huge role in Biden’s successful presidential run, claimed the “sloganeering” of the Black Lives Matter protests and other social justice efforts might have hampered them.

The South Carolina congressman and civil rights veteran compared the “defund the police” mantra of certain activists to civil rights efforts in the 1960s when radical messaging lost the movement public support, The Guardian reported. He fears that same can happen to the Democrats.

“I came out very publicly and very forcibly against sloganeering,” Clyburn said on CNN’s State of the Union. “John Lewis and I were founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. John and I sat on the House floor and talked about how to defend the police slogan, and both of us concluded that it had the possibilities of doing to the Black Lives Matter movement and current movements across the country what Burn, Baby, Burn did to us back in the 1960s.” Clyburn said.

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.

According to Clyburn the “Burn, Baby, Burn” chant during the Watts civil unrest of 1965 in Los Angeles cost the civil rights movement.

“We lost that movement over that slogan,” he said. “We saw the same thing happening here. We can’t pick up these things just because it makes a good headline. It sometimes destroys headway.”

4. Rahm Emanuel is being considered for a spot in the Biden administration

Rahm Emanuel was the mayor of Chicago when the city covered up evidence of the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by officer Jason Van Dyke for more than a year while Emanuel was facing re-election. Worried he’d lose re-election, Emanuel went to court to prevent dashcam footage of the murder from being released, American Prospect reported in June 2020. Despite securing a $5 million settlement with McDonald’s family weeks before the election, the city held off final approval of the deal, preventing a media uproar until a week after Emanuel was re-elected.

“It’s hard to imagine a worse adviser for Biden, after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, than Emanuel,” wrote Max Moran, a research assistant at the Revolving Door Project.

5. Tech billionaire Eric Schmidt applied for citizenship in Cyprus

Biden said he intends to raise taxes by nearly $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years on corporations and individuals earning more than $400,000 a year.

If Dems get to a 50-50 split in the Senate, there is nothing stopping President Biden from putting his stamp on the tax law, Forbes reported. He could pass his vision of tax reform without a single vote from a Republican thanks to “Budget Reconciliation,” a streamlined process for passing bills that comes in handy when the same party controls the White House, House of Representatives, and the Senate.

As part of the process, when a bill gets to the Senate, instead of needing the standard 60 votes for passage, it instead requires only a simple majority of 51 votes.

One of the world’s wealthiest people, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has bought citizenship in Cyprus, which will allow him to travel to the European Union. It’s a way to take advantage of foreign countries’ laws but some worry it’s a way to hide their assets from tax authorities, Vox reported. 

Experts say some of the increased interest in non-U.S. citizenship is due in part to concerns about political instability in the U.S.

Some people who claim Cyprus citizenship are attracted by a reduced tax burden. Immigration attorney Andy Semotiuk said that his only American client who had claimed Cypriot citizenship did so to avoid paying U.S. income tax.

At Google, Schmidt pushed for the company to pay as little in taxes as possible, capitalizing on foreign countries’ tax rules. The company has long been dogged by allegations that it was not paying its fair share of U.S. taxes by using foreign tax rules in places like Bermuda or the United Kingdom, Vox reported.

“I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate,” Schmidt told an interviewer in 2012. “It’s called capitalism.”