Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt-Chapter 85 - 63: Washington’s Way of Doing Things

"Surgery?"

Montoya shook his head.

"You idiots, sitting in your offices staring at spreadsheets."

"Do you think this is twenty years ago? Do you think a few party bosses can just meet in some smoke-filled room and decide who the candidate will be?"

Montoya could no longer contain his fury.

He pointed a finger in Graves’s face and roared in a low voice, "Open your eyes and look at the world we live in!"

"Do you think Sanders is still that strange old man shouting slogans all by himself?"

"He’s holding a donor list with millions of young voters! He has the thirty solid votes of the entire House Progressive Caucus behind him!"

"He can get tens of thousands of college students to take to the streets and shut down your campaign rallies!"

"You’re betting an already uncertain midterm election on the price of losing our entire left-wing voter base!"

"You lunatics!"

Montoya paced back and forth in the office, his breathing ragged.

He wasn’t angry because the Establishment Faction was suppressing the Progressives.

As the Party Whip, he often did such things himself. Politics was inherently a brutal game of purges and exclusion.

What infuriated him was the stupidity and arrogance of these people.

Before they made their move, they hadn’t bothered to assess their opponent’s strength or their determination to fight back.

They thought that by using a few procedural tricks, the young man from Pittsburgh would simply fall in line, and Sanders would just swallow his anger.

Instead, they kicked the hornet’s nest.

Now, not only were the hornets stinging people in Pittsburgh, but they had flown all the way to Washington, to the Congress Building, and were starting to sting the Democratic Party’s most sensitive nerves.

"Kod, we didn’t think it would be such a big deal..." Graves, intimidated by Montoya’s intensity, said with a wavering voice, "We thought it was just a minor surgery..."

"Minor surgery?" Montoya snorted. "You cut off the young man’s data access. Did you think that was some brilliant move?"

"In Sanders’s eyes, this wasn’t just an attack on his ally; it was a declaration of war on his entire faction!"

"You were telling him that the Democratic National Committee is no longer impartial and is preparing to purge them completely."

"Once that consensus forms within the Progressives, we won’t just be facing the loss of a few seats, but a schism in the party!"

"If Sanders actually calls on his supporters to stay home on their couches during next year’s election, or to vote for the Green Party, we won’t just lose the House of Representatives—we won’t even be able to hold the White House!"

Montoya stopped pacing and looked at the pale-faced Graves.

"You nerds who only know how to read polling data have no idea what politics is."

"Politics isn’t about solving arithmetic problems; it’s about human emotion."

"Right now, that young man from Pittsburgh has become a martyr in the eyes of the Progressives, a victim bullied by the Establishment Faction."

"You’ve given Sanders the perfect excuse to raise hell in Congress, and we don’t even have a leg to stand on to argue back."

Graves wiped sweat from his brow and asked cautiously, "So... so what do we do now? Restore the young man’s access?"

"No shit!"

Montoya swore irritably.

"Not only do we restore his access, but we have to do it gracefully. We need to give Sanders enough face so he has a way to back down."

"Otherwise, that damned Regional Economic Recovery Bill is really going to die on the floor of the House of Representatives."

Montoya knew it was impossible to expect a bureaucrat of Graves’s caliber to clean up this mess.

He had to handle it himself.

This wasn’t just a party affairs issue; it was a strategic problem that concerned the very survival of the Democratic Party.

He needed to find the person who had orchestrated all of this from behind the scenes—the toughest operator in the Democratic Party’s Establishment Faction.

Montoya walked to his desk and picked up the secure line.

He took a deep breath, composing himself.

Then, he dialed a number.

The phone rang twice before it was answered.

A steady, authoritative male voice with a hint of a Southern accent came through the line.

"It’s late, Kod. I hope you have good news for me."

It was the House Democratic Leader, Raymond Walker.

"Raymond, we have a problem," Montoya said, getting straight to the point.

"About the vote on the Regional Economic Recovery Bill?" Walker’s voice didn’t sound panicked. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"It’s more serious than that." Montoya gripped the receiver. "The failed vote is just a symptom. The root of the disease is in Pittsburgh."

"Those idiots at the Democratic National Committee, in the name of so-called ’purifying the ranks,’ carried out a botched purge in Pittsburgh and pissed off Sanders."

"Now, Daniel isn’t just abstaining on votes in the House of Representatives. He’s issued an ultimatum in the Rules Committee. You’ve probably heard."

"If we don’t solve the Pittsburgh problem, he’s prepared to launch a civil war within the entire party."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.

Walker was clearly processing this information.

As the leader of the Establishment Faction, he was of course aware of the Democratic National Committee’s "purification plan." He had even tacitly approved of its general direction.

But he never expected the execution to be so clumsy, or the backlash to be so fierce.

"That young man in Pittsburgh, what’s his name?" Walker asked.

"Leo Wallace."

"Wallace..." Walker repeated the name. "A nobody I’ve never even heard of, and he’s got Daniel this worked up?"