Blog #301
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Weekend Beacon: A Disillusioned Democrat Dishes the Dirt
August 22 - 23, 2026
Earlier this month Josh Kraushaar reviewed How the Dems Screwed Bernie, Tad Devine’s screed against establishment Democrats who thwarted the Sanders campaign. The struggle session continues this week with David J. Garrow’s review of Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative by Evan Barker.
“Even back in 2008, Barker had witnessed ‘how prominent celebrities were on Democratic campaigns,’ but over time she concluded their visibility did not help Democrats win over undecided voters. She realized that ‘if anything, celebrities are a liability,’ but saw how ‘politicians just want to be around famous people.’ That speaks of course to just how deeply insecure needy candidates are, and Barker concluded that ‘the only reason Democrats bring celebrities around is because it’s a way for them to feel cool.’
“As ‘the left-wing professional class’s obsession with identity politics’ took deeper hold in 2020-21, Barker felt increasingly uncomfortable. ‘The pressure from donors to place identity over everything was completely overwhelming,’ and ‘the professional pressure from outside our firm to discriminate against white men was unreal.’ Indeed, by late 2021 ‘a culture of fear and paranoia permeated the progressive movement.’
“Barker exaggerates not one whit when she acknowledges ‘my natural talent for writing,’ and Nothing Left features a tone of wistful sadness and regret. ‘I was seeing the destruction of the party of the working class in real time,’ by ‘people who had zero cultural connection to the people the party had long represented.’ She recounts how ‘most of the people I encountered in progressive politics, but especially in the criminal justice reform space, came from extremely privileged backgrounds,’ as of course so did virtually all of the party’s significant donors, and she cites data showing that ‘Democrats now win 65 percent of Americans making over $500,000 a year.’ Given her own humble, working-class heritage, ‘I felt great resentment toward people who peg all white people together as belonging in one solidified homogenous culture, because I have little in common with many of the white people I know.’”
A hospital for Jews had little in common with the city surrounding it—Berlin in the 1930s and ’40s. And yet it somehow survived. Dr. Stanley Goldfarb reviews The Jewish Hospital by Jonathan Hammel.
“The setting is March 1943, a full year after the Wannsee Conference where Reinhard Heydrich and 15 officials of the Reich agreed to the final solution of the Jewish question. Earlier plans for emigration of Jews to welcoming countries failed as there were no welcoming countries. Later emigration to neighboring countries only led to death as the Nazis swept through Eastern Europe and killed as many Jews as they found. But a more efficient and organized solution was in the offing.
“The rationale for this hospital reveals the ludicrous and insane mindset of the Nazi bureaucracy. Apparently, they believed the 70,000 Jews of Berlin needed to be in good physical shape before they were transported to the labor camps like Sachsenhausen where they survived an average of about two weeks or to the death camp of Auschwitz where they lasted about two hours. Any pregnant women would deliver their babies there and then go on transports to their death.
“Some of the characters in the book have been given pseudonyms, including the author’s grandmother. Gerda Schild Haas is called Lena Schild, and her close friend Sophie Gollschmidt portrays Stella Goldschlag, a notorious Nazi collaborator forced to spy on her fellow Jews. Schild eventually is sent to Theresienstadt camp, the Potemkin village created by the Nazis to pretend that Jews were well treated whenever any investigation was performed. The actual head of the hospital, Dr. Walter Lustig, retains his name. Lustig was a physician who lost his license as part of the Nuremberg Laws but worked closely with the Nazis in his efforts to keep the hospital open, prevent the staff from being deported to the camps, and ensuring his own survival.