10/11 News Roundup – Progressives Push For A Primary Challenge For Feinstein, The Fight For “Tuition Free College” & More – The Progressive Wing

↓

JAVASCRIPT IS DISABLED. Please enable JavaScript on your browser to best view this site.

Home→Candidates 2018→Ben Jealous→10/11 News Roundup – Progressives Push For A Primary Challenge For Feinstein, The Fight For “Tuition Free College” & More

Hello friends!

Starting off with the TheProgressives Push for A Feinstein Primary Challenge:

Progressives are gearing up to challenge Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) after the long-time senator announced Monday that she will run for re-election next year.

Confirming her bid on Twitter, Feinstein vowed to keep working on “ending gun violence, combating climate change,” and addressing “access to healthcare.”

However, during her five terms in the U.S. Senate, the 84-year-old has also riled many progressives with her opposition to a single-payer healthcare system and her support for laws such as the Patriot Act and the FISA Act.

In a recent piece for Splinter, formatted as an open letter to the senator, Emma Roller captured a growing sentiment among California progressives:

Let’s face it: You are a hawkish, centrist Democrat in a state full of voters that have become much more liberal than you have shown yourself to be. Perhaps now would be a great time to retire and make way for a candidate who better reflects the views of your constituents?

Now that Feinstein has committed to running, though, constituents and even some other California lawmakers are calling for more progressive candidates to challenge her.

The article goes on to talk about potential challengers and such, but fails to mention that Feinstein already had a primary opponent for months, proud Democratic Socialist David Hildebrand:

https://youtu.be/TyaqAwZcw7s

More news/video/etc. in the comments section, including:

*Puerto Rico/US officials privately acknowledge serious food shortage
*Heart of disaster: California wildfire evacuees return to a wasteland
*2017 on course to be deadliest on record for land defenders
*A Bernie Sanders campaign veteran advises a surging opposition movement in Russia
*Despite GOP Dereliction, Warren Vows to Fight for Program That Insures 9 Million Kids
*Pipeline Updates, Water Protector News & MOre

newest oldest most voted

Tips, Comments, Complaints, Etc!

Also using this for my skip ahead with news that might not be missed if its higher up, as I am posting in no particular order:

Labor for Our Revolution

The seven national unions that endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for president have come together to back Our Revolution—a national network created to continue the movement that grew out of the Sanders’ challenge in the Democratic primaries.

Currently there are more than 300 local Our Revolution formations in the U.S. and four State Committees (in Texas, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Maryland). These Our Revolution state and local chapters have been formed out of the activism and commitment generated by the Sanders campaign. They are autonomous, mostly volunteer organizations that rely on funding from their membership base.

The unions—the Amalgamated Transit Union, the American Postal Workers Union, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, the Communications Workers of America, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, National Nurses United, and United Electrical Workers—have formed Labor for Our Revolution. The group’s purpose is to assist Our Revolution’s campaigns and continue to tap into Sanders’ campaign base to gain support for collective bargaining, contract campaigns, and organizing. The people behind the alliance believe that Our Revolution won’t succeed without a solid foundation in the working class and strong support from the labor movement.

Communications Workers of America (CWA) past president Larry Cohen, who helped lead labor support for the Sanders campaign, is now the Our Revolution board chair and a key leader of Labor for Our Revolution. Cohen is urging union leaders and members to plug into local groups or form new ones of their own.

At a national Labor for Our Revolution meeting in Chicago, United Electrical Workers (UE) General President Peter Knowlton made a presentation about the networks mission and UE union members’ growing support for it.

We follow in the footsteps of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “The labor movement is the principal force necessary to transform workers’ oppression and despair into hope and progress.” Unions, along with workers’ centers and other workers’ organizations, must prioritize policies that strengthen and fortify the organization of workers in order to protect us against the ravages of capitalism. We can deepen and reinforce this perspective in Our Revolution.

Oh, that sounds good. The lines are being drawn, aren’t they?

Fake progressive groups like CAP (Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden, Podesta) on one side, labor and real progressives on the other side.

Did you see this?

Why hasn't the Department of Education done more to celebrate successful charter schools? https://t.co/QJoHCU8hLF

— CAP K-12 Education (@EdProgress) October 10, 2017

Here is the list of CAP’s current board members:

Board of Directors
Sen. Tom Daschle, Chair
Neera Tanden, President
Secretary Madeleine Albright
Glenn Hutchins
Jonathan Lavine
John Podesta
Susan Sandler
Tom Steyer
Donald Sussman
Jose Villarreal
Hansjörg Wyss

I know some of those names of course, but picked one out that I wasn’t familiar with and looked him up, purely randomly. Well, if there’s something Mr. Glenn Hutchins is good at, it’s getting himself onto a lot of boards! Including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and The Brookings Institution, which has written in support of charter schools.

Also, Hutchins goes way back with the Clintons,

Hutchins left the (private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners) in 1992 to join the Bill Clinton presidential transition team as a Senior Adviser focusing on economic policy. After two years serving as a Special Advisor on economic and healthcare policy in the Clinton Administration, Hutchins returned to private equity, this time joining The Blackstone Group in New York.[2]

and also Obama. This article from 2013:

Glenn H. Hutchins ’77 teed it up with President Barack Obama twice this summer at the Vineyard Golf Club in Martha’s Vineyard, according to White House pool reports. Hutchins is a member of Harvard Management Company’s board and a longtime Harvard donor.

For their first round together in mid-August, Obama and Hutchins golfed with World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and Cyrus Walker, a usual golf opponent.

Oh what a tangled web..

Pretty sure the Susan Sandler mentioned at the end of this is the same one on your list. Daughter of Herb Sandler,

The Sandler Way: Where Big Philanthropy Meets the Art of Common Sense

and then..

Podesta paid $7,000 a month by top donor

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, last year signed a $7,000-a-month contract with the foundation of a major Clinton donor who made a fortune selling a type of mortgage that some critics say contributed to the housing collapse, hacked emails show.

In February of last year, as Podesta was working to lay the groundwork for Clinton’s soon-to-launch campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he signed the contract with the Sandler Foundation, which was started by Herb Sandler and his late wife Marion Sandler.
The contract — a copy of which was included in emails illegally obtained from Podesta’s Gmail account and disseminated Monday by WikiLeaks — is still active, according to Herb Sandler, who said that it calls for Podesta to provide advice on grant-making and other foundation functions.

It’s unusual for the full-time chairman of a general-election presidential campaign to maintain an active side deal with a major donor to that campaign — let alone to raise money from that donor for the campaign.

The CAP board is made up of Clinton cronies Just like the DNC. In fact they are entrenched everywhere much to chagrin of actual progressives.

Occupy activists and Sanders-backed progressives are fighting (and winning!) local elections across the USA

Across America, Sanders-inspired left-wingers — many of the them Occupy veterans — are contesting local elections, challenging the establishment Democratic machine as well as the GOP, and they’re making enormous progress.

It started in the south, with the mayoral races in Birmingham and Jackson (with Atlanta up for grabs), and then onto the midwest, where the Democratic establishment is in retreat in Colombus, faced with progressive candidates backing a municipal minimum wage rules that will defy state law.

Now there’s a live fight in Minneapolis, where establishment Democrats simply halted the nomination process when the machine-chosen candidate was drubbed in early voting by candidates backed by the Sanderist Our Revolution movement.

Then there’s an upcoming runoff election for the mayoralty of Albuquerque, where an Our Revolution-backed candidate is running ahead of the incumbent mayor.

Interestingly, the Minneapolis race has favored the insurgent candidates thanks to the ranked choice ballots, which make it politically inadvisable for politicians to deliberately offend anyone, which means that the traditional incumbent tactic of smearing new entrants with negative advertising isn’t on the menu in the Twin Cities.

Ranked choice sounds good, anyway. I’ll have to read up on it to be sure there aren’t hidden cons.

Ranked Choice from the way I’ve heard it described via Thom Hartmann, can be a damn good thing.

Not sure if this is accurate (it is the internet afterall), but heres some details on who has ranked choice and when they started:

http://www.fairvote.org/rcv_in_us_elections

Thanks! Maybe this has to come before we get the good stuff passed, eh?

Why Democrats Need a 50-State Strategy By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Given the party’s recent losses, Democrats’ latest attempts to compete at the federal level in traditionally red states may seem off base. In 2018, 10 Democratic senators are up for reelection in states where President Trump prevailed, while just one Republican incumbent is running in a state that Hillary Clinton carried. Yet despite the daunting landscape, some Democrats are setting their sights on races in Texas and, more unexpectedly, deep-red Alabama.

Unlike with previous bids to expand the electoral map, however, these Democrats are not relying on outside money or slickly produced ads. They are doing it with strong candidates who are running smart, locally driven campaigns.

The “establishment Democrats” only want to contest in districts when they are in control and can control the outcome. Quite the losing strategy.

The how to lose 1000 seat without really trying strategy.

Video of Bernie’s College For All rally can be seen in @Magsview‘s liveblog just under this roundup.(thanks mags!).

Bernie Sanders: One thing needs to change in order to make America ‘great’

In an opinion piece for Vice Impact, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) discusses what he believes America actually needs to become “great”: High-quality higher education delivered to citizens for free.

What would help is “not spending tens of billions more on weapons systems or providing trillions in tax breaks for the rich,” he writes. “It is having a well-educated population that can compete in the global economy, and making it possible that every American, regardless of income, has the opportunity to get the education they need to thrive.”

However, he writes, “we are moving further and further away from that goal,” thanks to the high cost of college.

More than 44 million Americans have taken out student loans to pay for school, with their debt totaling $1.4 trillion. The average debt for 20-year-olds is $22,135. For 30-year-olds, it’s $34,033.

And while wages aren’t rising much, the cost of tuition is. That could explain why the number of loan defaults has reached a new high.blockquote>

Sanders: To Lift ‘Outrageous’ Burden of Student Debt, Time for Tuition-Free College for All

In order to lift the burden of debt on millions of students and unleash the potential of current and futute generations, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) declared on Tuesday night that the time is now “to make public colleges and universities tuition free” in the United States.

In the speech, delivered at Castleton University in his home state of Vermont, Sanders called for all U.S. students, regardless of background or ambitions, to have access to higher education that would not saddle them with loans.

“It’s time to reduce the outrageously heavy burden of student debt that is weighing down the lives of millions of college graduates,” Sanders said.

“And let me be very clear,” he added. “I am not just talking about 4-year universities and colleges. I am talking about community colleges. I am talking about vocational schools. I am talking about apprenticeships. We desperately need highly trained and highly skilled electricians, welders, plumbers, mechanics, pipefitters and health care workers of every kind. Each and every American must be able to get the education they need to match their skills and fulfill their dreams.”

Wonder what the average loan debt is for seniots (thinking it’s high).

Ben Jealous wants tuition-free college in Maryland. His plan is like Sanders’ ‘College For All’ bill

Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous wants Maryland to become the second state after New York to provide public higher education free of charge.

Jealous told a group of students and progressive activists gathered Tuesday night at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, that he would help pay for the plan by ending mass incarceration. “College is as important in the 21st century as high school was in the 20th century,” the former NAACP president and tech investor said.

He spoke after the students participated in a virtual town hall hosted by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, who endorsed Jealous’s gubernatorial bid in July, outlined his plan for tuition-free college nationwide in a speech that was broadcast to hundreds of campuses.

Jealous has not estimated how much a Maryland tuition-free state program would cost, how many students would benefit or what type of income-eligibility requirements would be required. “We’re still looking at those numbers,” he said.

Still, the proposal is likely to help set the tone on college-affordability issues as the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary campaign gets underway.

Everyone can of course feel as they wish, but I for one am no longer spending any time on Randy Bryce. If an article pops up, I’ll post it, but that’s pretty much it.

Remember this?

Randy Bryce Dodges Forum with Democratic Primary Challenger, Cathy Myers

well @Ironstache who ive tweeted to for weeks about this and have been ignored (but who I mentioned positively in a post yesterday and got a like from) apparently just does not want a forum with his opponent, but has time to tweet about:

Thank you @RubenGallego for having a real public #townhall with me in #WI01
It's one more than @SpeakerRyan has had in over two years.

— Randy Bryce (@IronStache) October 10, 2017

Iron? That stache is made of glass.

So sad to smell the bad odor coming from that one. I wonder if Susan Sarandon, who seems relatively savvy overall, is still pitching for ‘stache’?

https://twitter.com/Evil2System/status/912759170478129152

She probably signed up for stache early b/c of his support of MFA–prolly hard to switch later. but yeah, bummer.

Well there was a very big push to get Bryce out early and on all the tv shows and in all the magazone interviews which totally overshadowed her announcement, and since then they do everything they can do hide Myers till she is out of funds. Its ruined my once positive opinion of Bryce and is true ‘bro’ism’. Other Dems should be ashamed for not speaking up/out.

I have a real problem voting for someone whose afraid to debate, who knows maybe he’s not good at it.

True. Wonder if she is encouraging him to fight. Hope she reads TPW!

In twitter conversations Ive encouraged her to at least go a cardboard cutout route if nothing else fails. She has the most LOCAL endorsements, if all of them showed to a cardboard cutout event, it would surely make some press and make Bryce at least look bad, which at this point despite his republican opponent, he should.

A Bernie Sanders campaign veteran advises a surging opposition movement in Russia

Vitali Shkliarov, a 41-year-old political operative born in Belarus, speaks the gospel of Bernie Sanders in the style of a Silicon Valley executive. Technology, he says, is a key to access, and his dream is a “political Uber” designed to pick up potential candidates and get them around the barriers keeping them from office.

The idea got a test drive in Moscow’s recent municipal elections, but the veteran of the Sanders and Barack Obama campaigns sees it as part of a worldwide movement.

“Obama made politics in America — but also worldwide — cool and sexy,” Shkliarov said in energetic, accented English during a recent interview at a Moscow cocktail bar. “Next, and I was part of it, was Sanders making politics like a Woodstock festival. It was about education, not partisanship.”

The next step, he said, is to ensure that anyone can become a candidate.

“This is the new era of politics, not just in Russia, but in America, too,” he said.

The whole world that not only sings It’s a Small World, but actually acts that way–now that would be awesome! I hope he and others can do this thing

Somehow something smells a bit fishy with regards to him. his wife works in the State Department.

More info about him can be found here.

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/a-sanders-campaign-adviser-was-a-russian-vitali-shkliarov-speaks-out/

It certainly would create a significant progressive bridgehead if Bernie and Jeremy could lead their respective countries. One can dream!

Heads would explode in the US thus expediting the need for Berniecare for all to be the law of the land in the US, GBR has it already

Democrats, please primary Dianne Feinstein — just avoid pitfalls of Clinton vs. Sanders

Feinstein should run for re-election — and she should be challenged from the left. Half of likely California voters said Feinstein should not seek a sixth term, according to a poll released late last month. That likely reflects the way the state has changed during her years in politics; a centrist, hawkish Democrat is no longer a perfect fit for California, a deep blue state.

Hillary Clinton carried the state in November by a margin of 3.4 million votes, which was more than her overall national advantage. So Donald Trump’s claim that he won the popular vote would be true, if he could subtract California from the nation.

As the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feinstein did little or nothing to resist Trump’s most significant accomplishment thus far: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. The day before she announced her re-election bid, Feinstein sounded tone deaf on the issue of the moment, refusing to commit to returning contributions she might have received from disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

“I don’t know that I’ve received any. I’ll certainly take a look, and then I’ll make a decision,” Feinstein said on “Meet the Press,” after decades’ worth of sexual harassment complaints against Weinstein emerged.

Feinstein shouldn’t get a free ride here. She may well face a challenge from the Democratic left flank, largely on the theory that safe Democratic seats — and California’s are the safest — should be reserved for those who represent the base. Feinstein no longer does. When California’s other veteran female senator, Barbara Boxer, retired in 2015, her exit allowed for the election of the state’s first Asian-American and African-American senator, Kamala Harris. While Harris is herself a controversial figure to many progressives, she is still inarguably representative of the base of her party in the state — women of color. Harris’ immediate endorsement of Feinstein’s re-election bid felt to many like short-order betrayal of the activist spirit that swept the younger senator into the national spotlight.

Garcetti, Harris shaking trees for Feinstein re-election bid

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein launched an informal fundraising blitz, hours after she announced on Twitter Monday that she plans to seek re-election next year.

High-profile Democrats, including her U.S. Senate colleague Kamala Harris, quickly scrambled to publicly state their support for Feinstein, who has dodged questions for months about her future political plans. Harris is among Democratic elected officials, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, seeking to help Feinstein in her 2018 re-election bid. Harris sent out an email blast Monday asking for donations to Feinstein’s campaign as small as $3.

Harris and Feinstein differ widely on their approach to politics and policy. Their contradictions have been on display in recent months, with Harris calling for a national, government-funded health care system and Feinstein balking at the approach, known as single-payer. Feinstein has also called for patience with President Donald Trump, while Harris has added fuel to left, saying at several public events this year that now is the time to fight.

“Since joining the Senate in January, I have found few better allies in our fight to stop the radical agenda of Donald Trump than Dianne,” Harris said in the fundraising email. She’s joined with us in every major fight, helping to shape the debate on issues like climate change, gun violence and saving the Affordable Care Act. The truth is we have many tough fights ahead, but I believe we can win them as long as we have fearless allies like Dianne Feinstein in the Senate.”

Harris is actually quite close to Feinstien, politically. I don’t for a minute believe that she would fight for progressive ideals. So many writers nowadays just take politicians at their pre-election word when they write about them.

chiplazarus

Now, of all times, it makes no sense to take any politician at their word.

As Feinstein Announces Re-Election Bid, Democratic War Looms

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., announced Monday she will run for re-election in 2018, setting the stage for a potential Democratic battle in the heartland of progressivism.

Feinstein, 84, said in a Facebook post that while she’s “immensely proud of my service,” there is more she wants to do “from ending gun violence, to combating climate change, to ensuring proper and affordable access to healthcare, and to giving DREAMers the chance to stay in the United States.”

Feinstein has bucked the left wing of her party on occasion, including during the state’s recent push to enact single-payer health care, and she is almost certain to face a primary challenge. On social media, allies of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., were quick to express their hunger for a fight.

Theres quotes from TOP in this article.

It’s debatable whether Hell even carried the state. Which reminds me, where are you, CA Dem?

And who says Harris represents women of color in Cal? Many POC would say otherwise.

I miss CA Democrat, anyone know where he posts at these days?! Im sure he could tell us how many millions of votes they have left to count from the primaries.

Yes! :O)

What happened during the (still on-going?) course of the 2016 CA Dem primary was insane. Such huge amounts of uncounted, or ridiculously slow-counted, ballots!

Harris seems to be just fine dashing around protecting the barricades around the status quo. She’s not even being subtle about it. Not a good look.

CA120: Bernie voters stay angry at Dem establishment

Throughout the 2016 election cycle, Capitol Weekly conducted several statewide polls. Two of them, one during the primary and the other during the general election, targeted voters right after they had mailed in their ballots.

In total, more than 80,000 Californians participated in these surveys.

Now, we’ve gone back to some of those same respondents to ask them how they feel about the candidates they backed, about the issues and about their perceptions of the political climate since the election. We also asked them this: Would they like to see their preferred 2016 candidate run again in 2020?

..

The survey, which can be seen in a fully-interactive infographic, polled 851 voters who cast ballots in the Democratic primary election and who in an exit poll told us they had voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

..

–When looking at specifics, Bernie Sanders voters have negative takes on the Democratic Party establishment, with 82% saying the party is too focused on political money and the needs of contributors. Three-fourths say the Democratic Party rigged the primary election for Hillary Clinton and two-thirds say that the establishment Democratic Party figures continue to fight Bernie today.

–In looking back at the 2016 general election, Sanders’ voters by a 3-to-1 margin believe that he would have defeated Trump, and 89% of Sanders supporters disagree that Sanders’ primary election attacks on Clinton contributed to her loss to Trump in the General Election.

POLITICO is such a RW rag. It’s disgusting that they’re insulting George McGovern, but no surprise. 🙁 I wish/hope someone brings up re-establishing votech (vocational technology) schools again. They were a great choice for kids who didn’t want to do college. The CA fires are awful. Climate change is one culprit. The other is the greedy over-development of areas that are naturally fire prone. It’s the same greedballed thinking that FL endures with the building in flood plains. LD, watch your snail mail. T and R to the usual suspects!! 🙂

Good morning orlbucfan!

The over-development in Texas is crazy, and I assume its just as bad elsewhere. Here we seem to have something against building upwards, so everything keeps expanding outward, meaning more highways, more walmarts every half mile, etc etc.

I’ll keep an eye out for that socialist delivery system, many thanks!

You nailed it:

Here’s Why Wildfires Will Only Get Much, Much Worse

The combination of climate change and land development has explosive consequences.

McGovern is loving Bernie from heaven. Failing that, he would have absolutely loved Bernie. The two men I’m most proud of canvassing, etc. for.

Apparently, the New Republic has a bit more of the scoop:

Clintonian Democrats Are Peddling Myths to Cling to Power

In a political age defined by two strains of populism—Trump’s on the right, and Senator Bernie Sanders’s on the left—New Democracy should be viewed by any sentient political observer as little more than a risible relic with a fancy budget. The most prominent Democratic politicians who’ve jumped on board are anything but prominent: John Hickenlooper, Colorado’s business-first governor, Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor and Clinton cheerleader, and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. But the old organs of the Washington establishment still take these people seriously, and otherwise intelligent Democrats still have a strange Pavlovian response to the dire warnings they issue, like clockwork, every four years: Embracing liberalism will always and forever end in defeat (even if Barack Obama disproved that theory not once but twice).

And so, last week, the Washington Post published an op-ed that disarranged the nerve endings of timorous liberals across the land: “Trump Is on Track to Win Reelection,” by professional Clintonite Doug Sosnik. (The last time Sosnik ventured such a bold prediction was in June 2016, when, even before the party conventions, he declared the election “already decided”—in Clinton’s favor.) Matt Yglesias at Vox, among others, hopped aboard this memetic bandwagon in subsequent days, offering up their own reasons why Trump’s “on track to win in 2020.”

Read the rest here.

https://newrepublic.com/article/145241/clintonian-democrats-peddling-myths-cling-power

I recognize the various strains not only at Vox but at TOP. I haven’t seen this appear yet at TOP, but we’ll see if the article gets any traction there.

Regarding George McGovern, while it is true that he was a last minute candidate put on the ballot in 1968, it was Gene McCarthy who loomed larger for progressives, especially to keep Wallace away. So really, this is a false narrative started by the Clinton/Establishment wing.

And they wonder why Trump won. May win again if there are only scraps offered at the table. Being anti-Trump is not enough.

↑