The big takeaway many in the media wanted to drive home about the 2022 election was that voters rejected extremists. Journalists framed the narrative using straw men to describe Republicans as “election deniers,” “Christian nationalists,” and the usual slew of epithets including racist and homophobic. This has been used to explain a disappointing showing by the GOP in gubernatorial and Senate races that were seen as vulnerable pick-ups for the Republicans.
Among those helming that cavalcade condemning “extremism” is Mark Mellman. In a recent op-ed in The Hill, the beltway political consultant who also is the head of the Democratic Majority for Israel, a 501(c)4 dark money organization that mainly acts to guide the Democratic Party to a centrist position, Mellman is at it again.
As I reported previously, DMFI’s stated mission of fighting anti-Israel extremism is largely a cover for promoting the power of the Democratic Party establishment throughout American government and only then supporting Israel. Many of the group’s opponents would fit neatly into its “extremist” narrative, be they progressive Summer Lee, who defeated a DMFI stooge in a primary for Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district this summer, or, more famously, U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (D-Colo.), who defeated Democratic nominee Adam Frisch, a DMFI-endorsed candidate.
But the extremism narrative hides a greater problem. DMFI received $250,000 from the notorious billionaire fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried (a.k.a. SBF). Unlike core Democratic PACs such as the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, DMFI still has not publicly addressed whether it will return SBF’s money. The PAC declined to comment on the donation when asked in November.
Mellman’s article on extremism also does not address his group’s endorsement and assistance to Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who doubles as the minister at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Warnock recently called on America to “repent for its worship of Whiteness” in a sermon during his election campaign. Now that SBF is officially charged with using customer funds for illegal campaign donations, DMFI may have been a beneficiary of those ill-gotten gains and used them to support a candidate that would normally qualify as an “extremist” by Mellman’s standards.
Mellman claims that only a very small group of Democrats are actually extremist and support the “defund the police” initiative that spread like wildfire in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
But what Mellman neglects to mention is that among those hiding their support for such policies is none other than Senator Warnock. Undercover video obtained by Project Veritas shows one of his finance staffers admitting as much. Another Democrat, Minnesota’s recently reelected Attorney General Keith Ellison, is an extremist and denier as well; not of elections but of his own past. As a Nation of Islam member and student activist, Ellison defended notorious preacher Minister Louis Farrakhan from charges of Jew hatred, but once his political career took off he denied ever having been involved in Farrakhan’s movement. Once a member of Congress, Ellison was later deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee before being elected in 2018 as Minnesota attorney general.
When Ellison ran for DNC chairman in 2017, retired Harvard Law professor Alan M. Dershowitz, one of the most influential Democrats at the time not in elected office, threatened to leave the party if Ellison won the office. He couldn’t stand an antisemite as the head of his party, but he didn’t care as a lawyer and civil libertarian that the same person became the most powerful prosecutor in the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.” Dershowitz remains a Democrat, and so does Mellman. The extremism is a mere annoyance for them.
The truth is that there is one type of extremism that they are absolutely fine with: Extreme, shameless corruption. It would seem that party shouldn’t matter, since enjoyment of corruption is a bipartisan pastime, but DMFI and Mark Mellman have no problem supporting the dirtiest and most brazen graft lords sporting “Ds” after their names.
Another prominent name featured on DMFI’s website is Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez in 2017 survived a corruption trial thanks to a deadlocked jury after accepting gifts and political contributions from an ophthalmologist in exchange for political favors. As if he didn’t have enough drama, Menendez is reportedly set to be indicted again for similar corruption and bribery charges involving some Hudson County, New Jersey businessmen.
The group’s PAC has also endorsed and supported Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.). It’s not surprising that given her centrist views and opposition to the party’s far-left faction that the group would endorse Wasserman-Schultz. But what is also widely acknowledged is that when she was DNC chairwoman Wasserman-Schultz acted consciously and willfully to stack the deck in the 2016 presidential primary against any opponents of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in particular Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Ultimately this saga led to her resignation prior to that year’s Democratic National Convention, and she has never given an explanation for why she acted to sabotage the primary campaign against Sanders.
If anyone should be credited for fanning the flames of extremism within the party through her officious and anti-democratic behavior, it is Wasserman-Schultz. But she’s the template of a good DMFI Democrat. If Mark Mellman wants to point fingers at who is responsible for the extremism in the country, he should first look at the mirror and then at the candidates he’s endorsed.