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President Donald Trumps abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey pitted Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calf.) against herself.

The ranking Judiciary Committee member on Tuesday issued a milquetoast statement after the news.

Anytime a significant controversy comes up, both sides play their base for the most part.

President Trump called me at 5:30 p.m. and indicated he would be removing Director Comey, saying the FBI needed a change, she said in the statement. The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee.

It did not take long, as politics rushed into the matter, for Feinstein to strike a harder line. She released a follow-up statement Wednesday calling for a special counsel to investigate possible Trump campaign collusion with Russian agents during the 2016 presidential campaign.

If Director Comey was fired to stifle the FBIs Russia investigation and the timing of this action makes that a real possibility that simply cant be allowed to happen, she stated.

Feinstein added that Americans must have faith inthe Justice Departments independence.

I cant yet say whether what the president told me is all there is to this, but I can say the Russia investigation was broad and far underway, and it must be allowed to continue, she said.

Feinsteins about-face came after progressives expressed frustration with her original statement.

One Twitter user wrote, The honorable Dianne Feinstein.. do you care to revise your BS statement on FBI Director Comey getting fired by president Trump. MAGA.

Another tweeted, Feinsteins lost it. THIS is her statement???

One progressive took to Twitter Wednesday to praise Feinsteins new tone: Yesterdays statement was embarrassingly weak. This is better.

Christopher Devine, a political science professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio, said Feinsteins initial and revised reactions indicate that left-wing activists are in no mood for moderation toward Trump.

Anytime a significant controversy comes up, both sides play their base for the most part, he said. Maybe she was holding off and waiting to see what the reaction was. Weve seen what the reaction is.

Feinsteins statement contrasts sharply with Californias junior Democratic senator, Kamala Harris, who immediately renewed her call for a special prosecutor.

What we see is somebody whos not going to run for higher office again and somebody who wants to run for president, Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson told San Franciscos PBS station, KQED News, on Tuesday.

Levinson added: We see someone whos winding down her career and may have to wind down because shes been so unemotional about things people want to see her fired up about.

Devine told LifeZette that it is puzzling that both Feinstein and the Trump administration apparently misjudged the reaction among Democrats.

Perhaps they thought that Comey was so controversial and discredited on both sides of the aisle that it would be greeted as welcome news, he said.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), the upper chambers most conservative Democrat, downplayed the significance of Comeys firing on Tuesday. He told CNN, To call it a massacre, I don't think you do that.

On the very day he offered that reaction, though, he drew a primary challenge from the Left. Paula Swearengin, a coal miners daughter and environmental activist, announced plans to run against Manchin in the Democratic primary last year. A supporter of universal, government-run health care and free tuition for public university students, she has the backing of Brand New Congress, a group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermonts self-described democratic socialist.

It is a reminder that even moderate Democrats perhaps even especially moderate Democrats have as much or more to fear from the Left as they do from the general electorate.

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California senator gets strident after leftists protest measured initial statement - LifeZette

TheDemocratic National CommitteesUnity Commission, which conducted its firstmeetingon May 5, is yet another symbolic gesture from the Democratic Party thats meant to manufacture consent without adoptingmeaningful reforms. The commissions 21 members are biasedin favor of the party establishment; Hillary Clinton selected nine members in addition tothe chair and vice chair of the commission.NewDNCChairTom Perez, a Clinton campaign surrogate, selected three committee members.

This committee ispredicated on Clinton supporters false belief that party unity can be achieved by courting the factions of the party equally, when in truth, Sanders supporters are disenfranchised from the party and their support must be earned. Party unity wont be accomplishedby symbolic diplomacy in which the Democratic establishment reverberates the mantra Democrats are united without making concessions or changingthe fundamentally corrupt mechanisms that enabled the DNC to cheat Sen. BernieSandersout of the Democratic presidential nomination. If theDemocratic Partywas genuinely striving for unity, it would admitwrongdoing and discuss possibilities to rectify the situation and ensure that it never happens again.

The commission wasfoundedin response to Sanders supporters persistent demands that the superdelegate system, a corrupt and undemocratic tool created by theDemocraticestablishment torallysupport for their preferred candidate, becompletely abolished. Its unlikely that many of the committee members who were selected by the establishmentfive of which were Clintonsuperdelegatesthemselveswill outright abolish thesuperdelegatesystem. These superdelegates include Rep. Marcia Fudge, Yvette Lewis, Elaine Kamarck, James Roosevelt Jr. and Jan Bauer. Notably, Kamarck was on the initial commission thatcreatedsuperdelegates in 1982. Sanders superdelegate Larry Cohen is also serving on the commission. Most likely, the superdelegate system will be minimally reformed in amanner that pacifies progressives but maintains the totalitarian power that superdelegates yield forDemocratsto prevent any future grassroots nominees from winning the primaries. The likely outcome from this commission is a few mostlymeaningless changes that will be cited to suppress progressives pushes for reform.

Several of the members on theDNCUnity Commission are examples of why unity within theDemocratic Partycannot be achieved by a commission of opposing sides. Sanders supporters ideological litmus test forwho should be making important decisions within theDemocratic Partyis overtly violated by several of the committees members. Jeff Berman, aClintonloyalist and commission member, is aformer lobbyistfor the private prison company the GEO Group and theKeystone XL pipeline. Berman was alsohiredby theClintoncampaign to whip superdelegates in her favor. Committee member Charlie Baker, former Clinton Campaign chief administrative officer, co-founded the Dewey Square Group, which lobbied on behalf of the health insurance industry during the initial Obamacare debate.The Interceptreportedthat Baker has also been aregisteredlobbyist on behalf of the drug firm Medicines Company. The Democratic Party cant be united by lobbyists and their positions on this committee proves that corporate and wealthy interests run the party.

The Unity Commission also has little authority to re-enact the ban onlobbyistsand PACs making donations to the DNC that was struck down byDNCmembers in February 2017. Rep. Ro Khanna respondedto the vote by saying that every DNCmember who voted in favor of it should resign. TheDemocratic Partyhas no chance for unity while it integrateslobbyists into leadership positions and simultaneously feigns support ofthe interests of working and middle class Americans. These interests are diametrically opposed to one another. Tryingto achieveunity among these opposing forces, one against lobbyists and one that views partnerships with lobbyists as vital to theDemocratic Party, is as futile as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

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Lobbyists and Superdelegates Corrupt DNC Unity Commission ... - Observer

It's going to take a lot more than just resistance if progressives are to recapture the hearts and minds of America.

Progressives must reclaim the Democratic Party from neoliberals, or continue to lose elections at all levels, as Democrats have been doing with increasing frequency since they abandoned the New Deal and adopted the raw deal. (Photo by DonkeyHotey/ flickr CC 2.0)

This post originally appeared at Common Dreams.

Ever since Trump got elected, theres been a lot of talk about resistance. As the country marked Trumps first 100 days, it reached a crescendo. Then Republicans in the House passed Trump care one of the cruelest Bills in recent memory. The reason they can screw so many people with relative impunity, is that theyve invested decades in creating a mega-narrative that insulates them from consequences.

The alternative is to continue to lose elections at all levels, as Democrats have been doing with increasing frequency since they abandoned the New Deal and adopted the raw deal.

Certainly, we must resist Trumps destructive agenda in every way we can. But if progressives are to recapture the hearts and minds of America it will take far more than just resisting. It will require that progressives develop a long-term strategy that addresses the needs of people, not plutocrats, that is based on values, not tactics.

And that has to start with reclaiming the Democratic Party from the neoliberals. The alternative is to continue to lose elections at all levels, as Democrats have been doing with increasing frequency since they abandoned the New Deal and adopted the raw deal. And if progressives cannot take over the Democratic Party we will have to start the long, slow slog toward building a third party and hope that theres enough left of the country and the planet to salvage by the time we succeed.

How Conservatives Took Over America

We can learn a lot from conservatives, because they executed a successful silent coup, more than four decades in the making, funded by and conducted on behalf of the oligarchy. Were not talking about some shadowy conspiracy featuring clandestine meetings, passwords, secret handshakes, James Bond supervillains, Freemasons orgaspeven the Trilateral Commission. This coup was more like a flock of vultures moving in tandem only because they were pursuing a shared vision of their own self-interest which was to relentlessly fleece us to feather their own foul nests. But if it wasnt a coherent junta, it was fueled by money. Lots and lots of money. And it had a blueprint The Powell Memo.

The strategy focused on:

The strategy has culminated in their spectacular success at all levels of government they now control both branches of the legislature in 32 states and the governorship in 24 of those states, as well as both houses of Congress and the presidency at the federal level. But an even starker measure of their success is how corporations and the uber-rich have prospered at the expense of the rest of us. The top one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans now have as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, democracy is all but dead in the Unites States, the press is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Oligarchy and both parties dance to its tune.

Government once the champion of the working man, the author of the New Deal and the architect of the longest sustained and broadly share period of prosperity in US history, has become the enemy. Meanwhile, the free market, which exploited workers, defiled the environment and operated outside of any moral framework, is now believed to be the font of all things good, delivered by pure serendipity. As a result, broad sections of society including much of the press, the establishment wing the Democratic Party, much of academia and the public policy infrastructure and of course Republicans believe taxes are bad, regulations are bad, small government is good, public programs are bad, and the markets (i.e. the oligarchy) will automatically provide great things if we just get government out of the way. This is the camouflage under which such nonsense as laissez-faire, trickle-down and supply-side economics keep getting resurrected, no matter how often it fails.

Republicans Strategic Approach Will Make it difficult to Win the House until 2022

For another example of the power of long-term strategic thinking over mere opposition or identity politics, consider project Redmap a Karl Rove effort that all but assures that Republicans will control the House until at least 2022 and that assumes Democrats stop navigating by their hood ornaments and get strategic. If they dont, then Republicans will control the House for much longer.

Republicans are just two states shy of being able to convene a constitutional convention and the Koch Brothers funders of the coup are pumping money into an effort to put them over the top.

As recounted in David Daleys Ratf**ked, Republicans targeted key races in the state legislatures with an eye toward gerrymandering the hell out of the House elections. The results have been dramatic. In 2012, the first year the full effect of redistricting could be seen, Democrats got 1.7 million more votes than Republicans, but Republicans won 33 more congressional seats. And for all the talk and the need to take back Congress in 2018, it will be extraordinarily difficult for Democrats to do in the face of such a stacked deck.

Heres the timeline for leveling the playing field. Democrats would have to launch an effective attack on Republican legislators at the state level in 2018 and 2020, then wait for the census results and draw reasonable districts that actually represent the people. As a result, the first time Democrats could face Republicans without their gerrymandered advantage will be 2022, again, assuming Democrats get their act together.

If this frightens you, it should. Even more frightening is the fact that Republicans are just two states shy of being able to convene a constitutional convention and the Koch Brothers funders of the coup are pumping money into an effort to put them over the top.

How Democrats Lost America and Why Theyll Continue to if They Dont Change Course

While conservatives are playing political chess and thinking several moves ahead, Democrats are playing political checkers and focusing on short-term excuses for losing the election like the Russian email hacks which as Norman Soloman pointed out, gives them a pretext to continue to blame their defeat on the Russians, rather than the fact that they ran candidates who put Wall Street over Main Street.

It is precisely this embrace of neoliberalism that has caused the Democratic Partys long, slow slide into irrelevance. Back in the 1960s, half the registered voters claimed to be Democrats; today, 29 percent do. Republicans have been hovering somewhere near 25 percent during the same period, while winning elections.

The reason Republicans win as a minority party is because Democrats have embraced neoliberalism and rejected true progressivism and the New Deal. As a result, turnouts at election time are typically low, and its the Democrats and disaffected independents who dont turn out. The difference between the trickle-down, supply-side con of the Republican Party and the Democrats embrace of the free market, deregulation, lower taxes, markets-know-best agenda that Bill Clinton brought to the party with the Democratic Leadership Council is simply too small to excite the people.

If Democrats want to win again, they will need to embrace real progressive values, restore a measure of diversity to the press and media by restoring regulations that allowed the FCC to bust monopolies, and invest in the needed infrastructure foundations, think tanks, academic chairs, etc., to carry a populist message and to reveal the treachery of the Republicans economic con game.

As you read this, theres a fight on for control of the Democratic Party. Incredibly, the old-guard neoliberal establishment is doing all they can to hold onto the status quo that enabled a dangerous know-nothing like Trump to assume the presidency.

Scary stuff.

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Why Progressives Need a Long-Term Strategy, Built on Values - BillMoyers.com

Every single time I think the academy has reached peak intolerance and peak insanity, it proves me wrong. There is no argument that is too stupid for academic radicals. There is no lie that these scholars arent willing to tell to advance their agenda.

Just ask liberal-feminist philosophy professor Rebecca Tuvel, the latest victim of the ritual two minutes hate. Her crime was serious: She had the audacity to write a paper exploring the arguments for and against transracialism and argued that considerations that support transgenderism extend to transracialism. In other words, she took the question that millions of Americans asked when Rachel Dolezal was exposed if a man can really be a woman, why cant a white person really be black? and explored it through a liberal, feminist lens.

Judging from the reaction, you would have thought she burned a cross in the quad. A fully woke University of Tennessee professor named Nora Berenstain fired the first shots. Her (now-private) Facebook post reads like an Onion parody of political correctness. Its worth quoting at length:

Tuvel enacts violence and perpetuates harm in numerous ways throughout her essay. She deadnames a trans woman. She uses the term transgenderism. She talks about biological sex and uses phrases like male genitalia. She focuses enormously on surgery, which promotes the objectification of trans bodies. She refers to a male-to- female (mtf) trans individual who could return to male privilege, promoting the harmful transmisogynistic ideology that trans women have (at some point had) male privilege. In her discussion of transracialism, Tuvel doesnt cite a single woman of color philosopher, nor does she substantively engage with any work by Black women, nor does she cite or engage with the work of any Black trans women who have written on this topic.

For those who dont know, deadnaming is the practice of using a transgender persons old name. In this case, she had the audacity to type the name Bruce Jenner. This, friends, is deemed to constitute actual violence. As is the notion that Bruce when he was an Olympic champion and featured on cereal boxes from coast to coast could have ever enjoyed male privilege. Thats violence. All of it. Perhaps now you can see why radicals riot. Theyre not committing crimes, theyre engaging in acts of collective self-defense.

Berenstain was hardly alone in her anger. Furious philosophers penned an open letter to Hypatia, the peer-reviewed journal that published Tuvels paper, accusing her, among other things, of using vocabulary and frameworks not recognized, accepted, or adopted by the conventions of the relevant subfields, mischaracterizing various theories and practices related to religious identity and conversion, and failing to seek out and sufficiently engage with scholarly work by those who are most vulnerable to the intersection of racial and gender oppressions (women of color) in [her] discussion of transracialism.

These critiques in addition to their typically intolerant intersectional incoherence were plainly false, as New York Magazines Jesse Singal pointed out: All in all, its remarkable how many basic facts this letter gets wrong about Tuvels paper. Either the authors simply lied about the articles contents, or they didnt read it at all. The only word Id quibble with here is remarkable. Its entirely normal for radicals to either refuse to read work they purport to hate or to lie about its contents. Just ask Charles Murray.

Rather than defend Tuvel, Hypatias board of associate editors responded with one of the most craven and cowardly statements in the history of craven academic cowardice. It begins:

We, the members of Hypatias Board of Associate Editors, extend our profound apology to our friends and colleagues in feminist philosophy, especially transfeminists, queer feminists, and feminists of color, for the harms that the publication of the article on transracialism has caused.

Harms? Are transfeminists, queer feminists, and feminists of color really so delicate that they cant withstand the publication of a paper they dont even have to read? Apparently. But back to the letter, which gets better (or worse, depending on how you look at it):

In addition to the harms listed above imposed upon trans people and people of color, publishing the article risked exposing its author to heated critique that was both predictable and justifiable.

Predictable, yes, but justifiable? At this point, scholars are threatening Tuvels future in the profession, and shes been deluged with hate mail and denunciations. How is any of that justifiable?

In all of this madness, there are perhaps some seeds of hope. There has been a backlash to the backlash. Singals excellent piece in New York unequivocally condemned the attacks on Tuvel as a witch hunt. Vanderbilt philosophy professor Kelly Oliver wrote a thoughtful essay calling for critical debate and philosophical arguments instead of cyber-shaming and personal insults. Other academics have weighed in on Twitter and elsewhere in Tuvels defense.

But in reading these pieces, a troubling subtext becomes apparent: It seems that the outrage isnt only the attack on free expression and academic freedom, its that it was directed at a liberal in good standing. For example, in a Chronicle of Higher Education piece called Academes Poisonous Call-Out Culture, writer Suzanna Danuta Walters begins with this:

We are in the midst of the Trumpian apocalypse. Actual bigoted provocateurs like Charles Murray and Ann Coulter throw flames in the academy. Hate crimes against trans people and people of color and Muslims are on the rise; womens reproductive rights are on the line, as are just about every other aspect of bodily autonomy and gender justice. So whats making scholars hyperventilate in outrage? A feminist academic whose body of work is clearly on the side of progressive social justice.

Is she even aware of the irony? I suppose the call-out culture is only poisonous when directed at progressives. Otherwise, Charles Murray is fair game. Otherwise, hyperventilation is fine. After all, abortion and just about every other aspect of bodily autonomy and gender justice are on the line.

Academic freedom cannot and will not flourish if its alleged defenders reserve their outrage only for when their ideological allies fall victim to the online mob. If progressives feel they have to torch conservative straw men before mustering up the courage to defend free inquiry, then academic freedom has a dark future indeed. Conservatives will be walled out entirely, and progressive discourse will be jammed into ever-tighter ideological spaces as a brave few liberals fight a desperate rear-guard action against the true radicals.

One hopes that professor Tuvels ordeal will serve as yet another wake-up call, teaching professors that there is no safe space from social-justice warriors. But if the Lefts defense against the far-Left is limited to calls for unity against the true enemy (men such as Charles Murray, apparently), then its just disguised intolerance. We should want academics to write about complicated, difficult, hot-button issues, including identity, Singal wrote. Online pile-ons cannot, however righteous they feel, dictate journals publication policies and how they treat their authors and articles. One wonders how many campus progressives are likely to agree with his sentiment.

READ MORE: Laura Kipnis: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus At Berkeley, the Mob Wins Again Its Time to Crush Campus Censorship

David French is a senior writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

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Progressives Eat One of Their Own in the Latest Campus Controversy - National Review

Progressives boycotted and then burned copies of Marvel Comics Captain America, which depicts the superhero as a Nazi-like antagonist, Saturday.

Marvel writer Nick Spencer portrayed Captain America as a Nazi-like bad guy in a Secret Empire issue of the comic given out on Free Comic Book Day Saturday, which was celebrated across the country,Heat Streetreported Monday.

Happy free comic book day!!! tweeted one user, posting pictures of a burning copy of the Captain America issue.

I was given this by someone who doesnt know who Nick Spencer is or that its a pile of garbage, claimed the user Calvin. I dont pick up free books to burn em [sic].

Individual act of protest [does not equal] state sponsored censorship, the user finished.

When you burn books youre not taking a stand against fascism, youre taking a stand against irony, said Spencer on Twitter Saturday.(RELATED: Iron Man Is Now A Woman, Because Diversity)

The stories we tell have consequences, insistedanother person on Twitter. The rise of fascism in the real world being mirrored in comics is no coincidence.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Spencer, as well as two book burners, but received no comment in time for publication.

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Progressives Protest New 'Captain America' Book By Burning It - The Daily Caller