{"id":177704,"date":"2019-07-06T19:56:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-07T00:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/07\/06\/a-good-start-5\/"},"modified":"2019-07-06T19:56:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T00:56:00","slug":"a-good-start-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/07\/06\/a-good-start-5\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Start"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>A group of former Bernie Sanders&#8217; staffers have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/bernie-sanders-former-staffers-launch-consulting-firm-to-primary-the-consulting-class\">formed a consulting group to take down the corrupt consulting class supported by the DNC and its ilk<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>About f%$#ing time.&nbsp;&nbsp; It&#8217;s bad enough that the current Democratic Party consults make elections more expensive because they get a percentage of the media buys, but they also suck at what they do: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Two alums of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/bernie-sanders-defines-democratic-socialism-as-key-to-defeating-trump\">Sen. Bernie Sanders<\/a>\u2019 (I-VT) 2016 presidential campaign have launched a consulting firm to help progressive candidates win elections and to stick a thumb in the eye of the Democratic Party establishment.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mvmtcomms.com\/\">MVMT Communications<\/a> is the brainchild of Karthik Ganapathy, who previously served as battleground states communications director for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/bernie-sanders-confronts-walmart-over-starvation-wages-at-shareholder-meeting\">Sanders<\/a>, and Mike Casca, the rapid response director on Sanders\u2019 campaign. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe sort of calcification around the Democratic Party\u2019s agenda has been driven a lot by the consultant class,\u201d Casca, who went on to serve as communications director for New York City Mayor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/new-york-city-mayor-bill-de-blasio-to-announce-2020-bid-on-thursday-nbc\">Bill de Blasio<\/a>, told The Daily Beast. \u201cWe have a party that is driven by a core of strategists that run a lot of their business on corporate clients and it affects everyone\u2019s thinking.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The launch of <a href=\"http:\/\/mvmtcomms.com\/\">MVMT Communications<\/a> comes as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/dccc-wants-to-save-a-pro-life-dem-dems-ask-at-what-cost\">Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee<\/a> has said it will not grant contracts to consultants who work with candidates who are running primary challenges against sitting incumbents. Though Ganapathy and Casca didn\u2019t say they created their firm in response to that decision, it is clear that their impetus for doing so was, in part, to try to rally in support of those candidates challenging entrenched incumbents. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let&#8217;s hope that they are more competent than the current lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A group of former Bernie Sanders&#8217; staffers have formed a consulting group to take down the corrupt consulting class supported by the DNC and its ilk. About f%$#ing time.&nbsp;&nbsp; It&#8217;s bad enough that the current Democratic Party consults make elections more expensive because they get a percentage of the media buys, but they also suck &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,504,374],"class_list":["post-177704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-philosophy","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177704"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}