https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/11/14/why-cant-inner-ring-democrats-just-say-no-billionaires

But the problem here goes beyond a political insider class that’s engorging billionaire dollars and flattering billionaire egos. These political insiders appear to buy into the core assumption behind plutocracies everywhere: that our wealthiest have something truly special to offer. The super rich, that core idea goes, must be super smart. How else could they have become so rich? Brilliance, in effect, both explains the existence of our billionaires and justifies that existence.

Bloomberg’s foray into Florida, CNBC reports, actually had Democratic Party leaders in the state “privately becoming more convinced that they were going to defeat Trump.” How could they not? They had a brilliant billionaire on their side.

In real life, billionaires don’t bring any exceptional brilliance into the political process. They bring their billions. They bring outsized stashes of cash that can distort election outcomes and safeguard their fortunes. Witness the $200 million our tech giants spent this fall on a ballot initiative to kill protections for gig workers.

And these dollars, even worse, drop a suffocating ideological wet blanket over the campaigns that Democratic Party candidates run. In this fall’s presidential contest, for instance, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were formally running on a platform many analysts considered “the most progressive document to come out of a major national party in US history.” The ideas in that platform — everything from a $15 minimum wage and ending tax breaks for capital gains to making public colleges and universities “tuition-free” for most students — had come out of joint task forces that brought together the party’s left and moderate wings.

But the campaigns Democratic candidates up and down the ticket actually ran essentially ran away from anything that might overly discomfort the nation’s most comfortable — and let Donald Trump and his pals pose as champions of average people against America’s overbearing elites. Trump came unnervingly close to winning. Many of his endangered pals did win.

Various national pundits are now savaging Republican movers and shakers for indulging Donald Trump, post-election, at his every narcissistic turn. But Democratic Party insiders remain largely free to indulge their super-rich benefactors. That has to change.

“Acquiescing to an unpopular and timid agenda that further entrenches the wealthy and the well-connected,” as Senator Elizabeth Warren puts it, “will lead us to more division, more anger, more inequality and an even bigger hole to climb out of.

“Unless Biden unites the people against the oligarchs who dominate the nation,” adds Guardian analyst George Monbiot, “the people will remain divided against each other.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/incoming-biden-chief-staff-warns-transition-delay-puts-vaccine-distribution-n1247860

President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, urged the Trump administration Sunday to reverse course and begin working on a presidential transition so that “nothing drops in this change of power” that would jeopardize the incoming administration’s ability to distribute a coronavirus vaccine.

President Donald Trump and his campaign continue to pursue legal challenges in several states contesting results and making unfounded allegations of widespread fraud.

In the meantime, the federal government has not yet gotten a key determination from the General Services Administration that would allow agencies to begin to cooperate with a transition, which Klain told “Meet the Press” has left the Biden team unable to speak to current administration officials or begin planning for how to take over during a crisis that’s killed more than 240,000 in America alone.

“Joe Biden is going to become president of the United States in the midst of an ongoing crisis. That has to be a seamless transition,” he said.

“We now have the possibility, we need to see if it gets approved, of a vaccine starting perhaps in December, January. There are people at [the Department of Health and Human Services] making plans to implement that vaccine. Our experts need to talk to those people as soon as possible so nothing drops in this change of power.”

Last week, the drug manufacturer Pfizer announced its vaccine appears to be 90 percent effective and the White House touted its “Operation Warp Speed” that it said will have enough vaccine to begin vaccinating about 20 million people per month in December.

But Biden’s transition effort says it has begun to plan its own distribution for the vaccine because the federal government is still blocking them from working with its public health officials.

Klain described the effort to get an effective vaccine from a laboratory to manufacturing, distribution and ultimately into the arms of Americans is a “giant logistical project” that requires careful cooperation.

“It’s great to have a vaccine but vaccines don’t save lives, vaccinations save lives,” he said.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-lives-matter-beat-police-unions-criminal-justice-los-angeles_n_5faf0cb0c5b6c5f3d2f75b29

Los Angeles County is home to the nation’s biggest local jail system. It also has the largest local prosecutorial office and some of the deadliest law enforcement agencies: The Los Angeles Police Department and the county sheriff’s department each kill more people per year than police departments in other major cities with comparable rates of violent crime. And, despite its progressive reputation, it’s a sprawling county of 10 million people who have, for years, elected tough-on-crime politicians.

But 2020 was different. In a key test of police reform after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the rallies that spread across the country this summer, anti-carceral candidates and policies won across the board — victories that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

From the City Council to the district attorney’s office, voters chose the candidates who ran on reducing incarceration and holding violent law enforcement officials accountable while also approving a measure requiring part of the county’s revenue to be set aside for alternatives to incarceration. At a time when some establishment Democrats are blaming their party’s electoral setbacks in the House on calls to “Defund the police,” activists in Los Angeles helped oust incumbents and went up against well-funded police unions and won.

The outcome, activists say, is the result of grassroots organizing by Black Lives Matter and allied groups who have worked for years to mobilize the community around racial justice demands.

“This is one of those cases where grassroots pressure, storytelling, organizing all worked together perfectly to beat back police union money,” Chris Lazare, the organizing director of Real Justice PAC, said in an interview. “I don’t think this happens without BLM.”

BREAKING: In our litigation, federal court finds that Trump administration’s latest attempt to terminate #DACA was invalid because Chad Wolf was not lawfully appointed.

Make no mistake: DACA recipients’ #HomeisHere! @NILC @WiracYls pic.twitter.com/OIWQPF6zrM

— Make the Road NY #FundExcludedWorkers 🦋 (@MaketheRoadNY) November 14, 2020

Those with household incomes < $50,000 in 2019 voted for Biden by an 11.5-point margin (55 to 43) vs an 8.2-point Dem margin in 2016 (50 to 42) … At least 6 million more people in households with income below $50,000 voted in 2020 compared to 2016.
https://t.co/vgzaZxMFr6

— Joy-Ann Pro-Democracy & Masks Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) November 14, 2020

Here’s a diary and thread that might interest you PB

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/15/1995892/-Am-I-the-only-one-here-who-thinks-the-election-was-rigged