If we have any chance to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent, we must expand the Democratic majority in Congress and continue to push them to represent the needs of the working class, not the billionaire class. https://t.co/TptSUFupDB
T and R x 2, jcb!! 🙂 Bernie’s Rally here was cancelled. I hope that means Maxwell Frost will win. It’s pretty much a certainty that DeSh##face will win re-election. But maybe not Rubio. We’ll find out soon enough.
Man, they are all over his stroke aka the loudmouth BS media. People like me would vote for him in a heartbeat. Both FDR and that bad joke Abbott in TX were/are in wheelchairs and won elections. So, what’s the problem?
FDR led quite well deespite being in a wheel chair, cant say the same about Abbott he has about.01 leadership skills that FDR had. Recovering from a stroke Fettermann still has way more cognative abilities than Abbott and other GQP congresscritters currently in office.
On Thursday, Bernie Sanders will hit the campaign trail to make his closing midterm pitch. He’ll go to states like Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania — “to places where we think we could have the most impact,” he says. He’ll go to congressional districts where his party has given up, like South Texas. He’ll campaign on behalf of Senate candidates who aren’t planning on appearing alongside him.
He’s going because, in the eyes of the 81-year-old progressive senator, his party is blowing its chance at midterms success. Democrats are letting Republicans win the messaging war on the economy — even though, as far as Sanders can tell, the GOP’s only plan is to cut popular social programs. “The Democrats have not been strong enough in making that point — and we’ve got to make it,” he says.
So Sanders is taking it upon himself as he embarks on an eight-state tour on Thursday. He’ll make 17 stops in total, primarily in liberal strongholds, such as Madison, Wisconsin, and Austin, Texas, where his most loyal supporters live. He’ll also go where he outperformed President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primary — particularly among working class voters in cities such as Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada. Sanders will hold an event on behalf of Michelle Vallejo, a progressive House candidate locked in a dead heat in a southern Texas district. National Democrats have abandoned Vallejo’s campaign in its final weeks as their financial resources dwindled, but Sanders, who won in the district in the 2020 primary, thinks that’s a mistake: “Why would you turn your back on a solidly working-class group of people, the Latino community in South Texas?”
“The theme that I am going to be bringing forth and making as strongly as I can, is that if you have concerns about creating an economy that works for all people, and not just billionaires, you cannot vote for Republicans,” Sanders tells me from his home in Burlington, Vermont, on Tuesday afternoon. “That it is insane.”
Sanders has long spoken of elections and their consequences in dire terms. During his two campaigns for the presidency, Sanders crisscrossed the country warning that corporate power and authoritarianism would erode human rights. Two weeks from the 2022 midterm elections, many of his fears are nearly realized. Roe v. Wade has been overturned. The Democratic Party’s control of the White House and Congress has yielded some progress, but not early enough, to reverse the coming climate catastrophe. Former President Donald Trump and his allies are waging a war “on the foundations of democracy,” Sanders notes. Under the banner of such bleakness, “a lot of people are discouraged,” he says. “That discouragement may result in them not coming out to vote.”
But “even above all those enormously important issues,” Sanders adds, “is the fact that we have more income and wealth inequality today in America than we’ve ever had.” Corporate greed is a root cause of inflation, he explains, “making huge profits and ripping off the American people.” The policy solutions Sanders suggests are wonky, but the overall point is this: “Republicans are going to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to pay for huge tax breaks to billionaires and the wealthiest people in this country. I don’t think that’s what the American people want.”
In the months leading up to November’s midterms, Democrats had eschewed Sanders’ economic prescriptions in favor of a message that emphasizes GOP attacks on abortion in the wake of Roe’s reversal. The final stretch has found the party scrambling to find a message that acknowledges voters’ financial hardships and proves Democrats, not Republicans, hold the solutions. But from Sanders’ vantage point, it’s still not enough. “Unfortunately, the Democrats sometimes do not do what they should and stand up to the drug companies or the insurance companies or the fossil-fuel industry,” Sanders says. “I want to do what I can to get them to do that.”
Who does Sanders want to be to his party in the year 2022? “My role will be simply to do everything I can to make sure that the Democratic Party listens to the vast majority of the people, who happen to be working-class people,” Sanders replies, “not just to establishment consultants and wealthy campaign donors.” This tour casts Sanders in a familiar role: as a critical but hopeful interlocutor who inspires Democratic voters, even when he’s not fully on board with the party — and the party isn’t fully on board with him. Sanders hopes that stumping this cycle could draw out the disillusioned corners of the electorate — especially younger voters, skeptical of the Democratic Party but not of the curmudgeonly octogenarian Democratic socialist.
He undertook a similar endeavor on Biden’s behalf during the 2020 general election with a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a virtual event with Teen Vogue, and a get-out-the-vote video with pop star Halsey. He did it even as Biden distanced himself from Sanders in the campaign’s last days, reminding viewers during an NBC town hall in October of that year that he’s “the guy who ran against the socialist.”
Some candidates whose Sanders’ tour is meant to boost have taken a similar tack. “Senator Sanders and John will not be appearing together in Pennsylvania,” says Joe Cavallo, the communications director for Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman — even though Fetterman had supported Sanders during the senator’s 2016 presidential run. A spokesperson for Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, declined to comment when asked if he would appear with Sanders during his four-stop swing through the state. Sanders had proudly endorsed him and allowed Barnes to borrow the Vermont senator’s name for fundraising emails, The New York Times reported.
Some of that is due to a technicality: Much of Sanders’ tour is being sponsored by the independent expenditure wings of progressive groups NextGen and MoveOn, and campaign finance law prohibits candidates from showing up at those events. “There are some stops that we are making that we are paying for from our own camp, where we can invite candidates or other campaigns, or whatever it may be,” Sanders says. “I don’t have all of the details yet.”
Sanders disagrees that any candidate hesitancy has anything to do with the potency of his movement. “I think that’s corporate media hype,” he says. He points to the “huge increase” in soon-to-be progressive House members expected to join the so-called Squad when Congress reconvenes in January. “If you look at underlined, strong — not somebody who vaguely calls himself or herself a ‘progressive’ — progressives, there will be more in the United States Congress than ever before in modern American history.” Of the planks of Biden’s economic agenda that were defeated in Congress last year, Sanders remains confident they reflect the will of the American public. “Everything that I have fought for, and virtually every provision in the Build Back Better plan that was defeated by Manchin and Sinema, every one of those positions is enormously popular,” he says.
But have those defeats given Sanders any pause about the potency of his politics or policy prescriptions — or pushed him to reconsider any of his priors on what brings voters into the Democratic fold? “That’s a great question,” Sanders replies. “Why don’t we talk about that after the next election?”
He cancelled his rally here in Orlando with Maxwell Frost. I hope that means Frost will win in our CD district. He is favored even with the latest RW gerrymandering. Bernie is 81 and we have to face reality with it. DeSh1tazz will win re-election. The big tossup is Rubio vs. Demings, which the craporate media is not paying attention to which is a good thing.
the problem wasn't with the letter itself, which basically wasn't any more than Biden himself has said many times, but a disastrous misreading of the political context https://t.co/K3SdYBmn7z
This doesn’t mean much at this point, but it segues to something I saw today driving home. If I had been walking, I would have taken and uploaded a photo.
Someone’s front yard had signs for the local and state Dems (incl JB Pritzker), and for Stacey Abrams, John Fetterman, and Beto.
Beto O’Rourke has served as a US House Rep., and he is more qualified to be TX governor than these bad jokes running for US Senate like Oz and brain damaged Walker.
This election is not just about you. It’s about our kids and grandkids and the kind of country we can become. We cannot fail them. I’ll be out on the road doing everything I can to help win this thing in the next two weeks. I hope you’ll do the same. pic.twitter.com/SeUF3zfCWn
It's clear why Fox and OANN do this. What's sucks more is that mainstream journalists and pundits so desperately crave partisan horserace narratives that they can't just report the empirical reality: that there's been a national crime increase unrelated to local politics. https://t.co/vFMX7vHTIy
Shell reported adjusted earnings for the third quarter of $9.45 billion, its second-highest profit on record. The energy giant is mainly benefiting from high oil and natural gas prices partly stoked by Russia's war in Ukraine. https://t.co/PrEw9l49m7
wpDiscuz
Hey Ozbrains, it’s no business of these so-called “political leaders.”
T and R x 2, jcb!! 🙂 Bernie’s Rally here was cancelled. I hope that means Maxwell Frost will win. It’s pretty much a certainty that DeSh##face will win re-election. But maybe not Rubio. We’ll find out soon enough.
T and R x 3, jcb!! 🙂 How’s your Halloween weather up north? I’m just about finished with the rest of my GOTV postcards. LOL.
Man, they are all over his stroke aka the loudmouth BS media. People like me would vote for him in a heartbeat. Both FDR and that bad joke Abbott in TX were/are in wheelchairs and won elections. So, what’s the problem?
FDR led quite well deespite being in a wheel chair, cant say the same about Abbott he has about.01 leadership skills that FDR had. Recovering from a stroke Fettermann still has way more cognative abilities than Abbott and other GQP congresscritters currently in office.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bernie-sanders-midterms-democrats-campaign-tour-1234618505/
He cancelled his rally here in Orlando with Maxwell Frost. I hope that means Frost will win in our CD district. He is favored even with the latest RW gerrymandering. Bernie is 81 and we have to face reality with it. DeSh1tazz will win re-election. The big tossup is Rubio vs. Demings, which the craporate media is not paying attention to which is a good thing.
This doesn’t mean much at this point, but it segues to something I saw today driving home. If I had been walking, I would have taken and uploaded a photo.
Someone’s front yard had signs for the local and state Dems (incl JB Pritzker), and for Stacey Abrams, John Fetterman, and Beto.
Beto O’Rourke has served as a US House Rep., and he is more qualified to be TX governor than these bad jokes running for US Senate like Oz and brain damaged Walker.
I found it amusing the non-IL Dem signs in the yard, that’s all.
Meow
I couldn’t resist. 🙂
Its that time of year 🙂
All the tracking polls showed movement to the Dems last week (probably coinciding with falling retail and gas prices and rising stock market)
It’s the usual for-profit, media white noize. The truth is these clowns have no idea who’s coming out to vote, and how large the timeout will be.
Man, my years are showing: turnout.