Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich agree

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/instead-of-challenging-joe-biden-maybe-the-green-party-could-help-change-our-democracy

To distract myself from wondering if my chest is tightening, I sometimes think about other things that could go really wrong this year. The list is long, but somewhere near the very top is the thought that the President could somehow eke out a close election victory, despite—well, despite everything.

There’s no guarantee it won’t happen. The Democrats didn’t find a perfect candidate, and there’s going to be an endless blizzard of Facebook lies, and team Trump is topnotch at voter suppression. But there are ways to lessen the odds a little, and a good one would be to not have a third-party challenge from the left this year, at least in the six or seven battleground states that are going to make the difference. That means asking the Green Party to stand down in those places. People with impressive left credentials—Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Ron Daniels—did this already, in January, in a well-argued open letter. But it didn’t seem to work: the Party’s most likely Presidential candidate, Howie Hawkins, declared that he would run even if the Democrats nominated Bernie Sanders, who, Hawkins told an interviewer, had been “a little slow” in his plans for reform. Hawkins has run many times for governor of New York, and also for the House and the Senate from that state, while never getting more than five per cent of the vote. (He did come in a respectable second in a Fourth District city-council race in his home town of Syracuse, in 2013.) “Recognizing the danger of Trump does not mean that electing any damned Democrat should trump all other considerations,” Hawkins said. So I probably won’t be able to persuade him, either, but let me at least offer the suggestion that there’s a particularly useful reform that Greens—and others interested in a more vibrant politics—could be working on, instead, this autumn.

To understand why this reform—ranked-choice voting—seems so important to me, let me say that, by ideology, I’m pretty much a Green. One of my favorite politicians anywhere is Bob Brown, a former member of the Australian Senate, who, in 1972, helped found what was arguably the first Green Party (and also saved a large portion of Tasmania’s classic wilderness). I’ve given speeches on behalf of German Greens and European Union Greens and local Green parties in many states and cities, and, whenever Canada holds an election, I stay up to watch the returns from the island district in the Pacific, off Vancouver, just to make sure that Elizabeth May, who for many years led the nation’s Green Party, has retained her seat. So I’m about as small-“g” green as green gets, having spent my adult life working on the greatest environmental crisis in the history of our civilization, the rapid heating of our planet.

But I haven’t supported the Green Party in national elections in this country, and that’s because of the way our electoral laws work. The obvious difference between the United States on the one hand and most of Europe on the other is that we have a de-facto plurality-winner-take-all two-party system that makes it all but impossible for a small party to make a non-perverse difference, while European countries have parliamentary systems with electoral mechanisms that encourage small parties to play constructively pivotal roles. Time and again, by winning five or ten or twenty per cent of the vote, and a like share of seats, the Greens who operate in parliamentary democracies have ended up with enough representatives to give them bargaining power when it came time to form coalition governments. And those bargains make big differences: having the Greens in a power-sharing government was a major reason that Germany pioneered renewable energy; currently, in British Columbia, a Green-Liberal coalition has bolstered opposition to giant pipelines.

In the United States, winning a few percentage points of the vote gets you nothing, except a chance to argue about whether you were the spoiler. Ralph Nader, in 2000, and Jill Stein, in 2016, have roundly insisted that they weren’t, arguing that the Democrats who were defeated in crucial states by margins smaller than their vote totals there did not run skillful enough campaigns. Relitigating that history seems less essential than looking ahead: the last poll I saw for Wisconsin showed that the race between a Democrat and Trump, for the state that many analysts predict will sway the election, was currently within three percentage points. So, if a Green Party candidate is on the ballot and attracts even a smidgen of support—well, it could end very badly indeed. And why would you take that chance this year?

Obviously, campaigning for R.C.V. is less sexy than campaigning for President, and it will take a little while (though the whole Green Party project seems premised on a kind of radical patience). If the Party insists on running a Presidential candidate in the few states where it really matters, I hope people will not waste their votes on them. That’s not because I think Joe Biden is a hero; it’s because I think he’s not only better than the alternative but also pushable. Politics doesn’t end on Election Day—if you’re serious about change, politics in some ways begins once the votes are counted, with the less exciting business of prodding politicians to keep promises or opening up the political space for them to do what they want. In that world, which is always the real world, the job is to elect a politician whom you have a chance of pushing, one who might take advantage of openings that movements can provide.

So, for instance, I had no problem working hard to elect Barack Obama as President (and Joe Biden as Vice-President), and also no problem helping gather some of the largest demonstrations of their Administration outside the White House. We were pushing for Obama to keep his pledge to be a climate activist by opposing the construction of the Keystone Pipeline; he eventually came on board. That was a hugely important development in the fight against climate change—and it launched similar movements around the world. With Trump’s election, of course, that kind of opening ceased—there’s no point pushing someone who takes pride in destruction. Now, there’s a very real chance that the pipeline will be built. Magnify that scenario across all the issues of the day and you see why most climate activists I know just shake their heads at the thought of a third-party challenge this November.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/492835-budowsky-sanders-obama-lead-democratic-unity-surge

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the greatest progressive leaders in many generations, deserves a standing ovation for all that he has done throughout a brilliant career that has many more achievements to come, and for his leadership today uniting Democrats behind the most consequential cause of our generation, ending the presidency of Donald Trump.

President Kennedy once said that courage is grace under pressure. Throughout his 2020 campaign, and now with his unequivocal endorsement of former Vice President Joe Biden for president, Sanders demonstrated courage and grace and all that is best about the Democratic Party and American democracy.

In the coming weeks and months, it will be increasingly apparent that there are wide areas of agreement on first principles of policy between those who backed Biden, those who backed Sanders, and those who backed all of the candidates who ran for the Democratic nomination. There will be dramatic initiatives to save the world from climate change. To make availability of Medicare a right for all. To save students and their parents from the crushing burden of student debt. To create economic policies that help all Americans and do not give special privileges and crony capitalist profits to the few.

The secret weapon for Democrats in 2020 is the public yearning for more civility in our civic life, more decency in our politics, more fairness in our economy, and a renewed respect for a shared American patriotism — the exact opposite of the Trump brand of bitterly divisive politics.

Sanders and Biden both embody a politics of decency and mutual respect. They have long been good personal friends and colleagues with many areas of agreement, a few areas of disagreement and a good faith search for common ground rooted in basic decency — which is what Biden and Obama and Sanders, the Democratic Party, and American democracy are all about.

Moved

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-enthusiasm-exclusive/exclusive-democrats-furious-with-trump-much-more-keen-to-vote-now-than-four-years-ago-reuters-ipsos-idUSKCN21X1AQ?utm_source=reddit.com

Democrats’ intention to vote is also rising more than it is among Republicans, both nationally and in historically competitive battleground states like Wisconsin that Trump narrowly won in 2016, according to more than 66,000 U.S. adults who took the Reuters/Ipsos online poll in the first quarter of 2020 or 2016.

The highly motivated opposition is another sign of trouble for Trump, who saw his chief argument for re-election – a soaring economy and record-low unemployment – evaporate amid a health crisis that has put millions of Americans out of work.

Even before the pandemic, Trump struggled to woo independents and moderates he would need to win November’s election, and recent polls showed Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by several points nationwide, as well as in battleground states such as Arizona and Michigan.

According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 70% of Democrats said they were “certain” to vote in the upcoming presidential election, 9 percentage points higher than in the first quarter of 2016.

Among Republicans, the increase from 2016 was much smaller – 3 percentage points – with 71% saying they will vote in November.

Democrats have for years outnumbered Republicans in the United States but they also tend to be less politically active. Yet for the first time since at least 2012, nearly the same percentage of Democrats and Republicans said they planned to vote in 2020.

When the poll combined states that are expected to be especially competitive this year – Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Colorado – voting interest rose by 11 points among Democrats over the past four years, while it only rose by 3 points among Republicans.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2020/04/15/cardi-b-bernie-sanders-go-viral-during-live-twitter-interview/2994618001/

It’s not often that former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has a live interview interrupted with, “Sorry, that’s my Momma calling.”

But it’s rare that Sanders takes a live interview with Cardi B from their respective quarantines during the coronavirus, a wild event that actually happened on Twitter and Instagram Tuesday.

Cardi B has been an outspoken supporter of Sanders, referring to him as “Uncle Bernie.” Their discussion, after Sanders dropped out of the campaign and endorsed Joe Biden, was a collision of massive social media audiences: Cardi has 62.6 million Instagram followers, to Sanders 4.9 million.

The rapper had plenty to say in the interview, despite the interruptions, and even managed to turn long statements into questions.

“One thing that baffles my mental, right, about number 45,” Cardi B said, refusing to refer to President Donald Trump by name, “is that, when this coronavirus news was hitting and everything, he just kept blaming, that this was a move by the Democrats to make him look bad. That everything the Democrats do is bad propaganda to make him look bad.”

“Honey, you don’t need the Democrats to make you look bad. You make your own self look bad,” she continued in a rant that Sanders eventually was able to break into and answer about Trump.

In another, actual question, Cardi B asked Sanders about his endorsement of Biden for president.

“A lot of people like the youth, they don’t rock with Joe Biden, because he’s conservative,” she said, eventually getting to. “I want you to explain to my platform, why are you endorsing him?”

Biden answered that Trump was “a bad-news guy that has got to be defeated” and that he vowed to support the Democratic candidate that prevailed. He also vowed to “work with Joe” to make him more progressive.

Another out-there interview moment featured the resplendently nailed rapper looking at Sanders’ fair less flashy fingernails.

“I can tell you’ve been in quarantine for a while now, with those nails,” she said, “It’s OK, Uncle Bernie.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/us/coronavirus-updates-usa.html

Retail sales plunged in March as businesses shuttered from coast to coast and wary shoppers restricted their spending, a drop that was by far the largest in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data.

Total sales, which include retail purchases in stores and online as well as auto and gasoline sales and money spent at bars and restaurants, fell 8.7 percent from the previous month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

The situation has almost certainly worsened since then. Most states didn’t shut down nonessential businesses until late March or early April.

What happens to retail matters to the broader economy. The sector accounts for more than one in 10 U.S. jobs; only health care employs more. Its stores generate billions of dollars in rent for commercial landlords, ad sales for local media outlets, and sales-tax receipts for state and local governments.

If retailers survive and can quickly reopen and rehire workers, then the eventual economic recovery could be relatively swift. But the failure of a large share of businesses would lead to prolonged unemployment and a much slower rebound.

But programs meant to support businesses, including government-backed loans and grants to keep businesses afloat, have gotten off to a rocky start.

“They need lifeboats, and the lifeboats aren’t getting out there fast enough,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “This is a time when speed matters more than bureaucracy.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/inslee-climate-plan-evergreen_n_5e961263c5b6a00694f4931b

Now a group of his former staffers is getting the band back together to promote an expanded version of that manifesto to candidates as the general election begins and to Democratic leaders as Congress weighs its next bill to curb the economic fallout of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The new nonprofit named itself Evergreen, after the roughly 200 pages of campaign proposals Inslee dubbed the Evergreen Action Plan, an allusion to Washington’s state nickname. Inslee, gripped by the COVID-19 outbreak in Washington, is not involved in the effort, as he runs for a third term as governor and grapples with flailing efforts to pass new emissions legislation in his state.

But Evergreen is headed by the former staffers credited with authoring much of the campaign’s policy program: Sam Ricketts, who went on to join the Center for American Progress as a senior fellow; Bracken Hendricks, a long-time Inslee adviser; and Maggie Thomas, who until recently worked for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign.

“What we need in climate policy, if we want to redefine what the solution is, is details and substantive plans,” said Leah Stokes, a climate policy expert and assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has been advising Evergreen. “These are people who’ve been working on this issue for decades.”

But Evergreen goes beyond what the Inslee campaign produced. The memo includes a novel section calling for the establishment of a new White House Office of Climate Mobilization, based on the World War II-era Office of War Mobilization, with a network of chapters in each state. It explicitly advocates revising the carbon-capture technology sector’s lone existing federal tax credit to discourage its use by oil drillers. The proposal also adopts the Warren campaign’s sweeping Blue New Deal proposal to regulate fisheries, spur new aquaculture markets and curb the impact of climate change on oceans.

Evergreen declined to name its exact funders, but a spokesman said it included “multiple environmental foundations.” Its formal launch, slated for later this year, comes as the Democratic Party seeks to unite its base ahead of what’s expected to be a difficult campaign against President Donald Trump, whose approval rating has climbed despite a bungled response to the pandemic and the unprecedented wave of job losses it induced.

Evergreen is targeting Democrats’ top brass, hoping to leverage the goodwill Inslee’s campaign garnered from both the establishment and progressive wings of the party to unite warring factions behind an ambitious, if markedly technocratic, approach.

Biden’s record of support for the 2003 Iraq invasion, opposition to universal health care and deep ties to the fossil fuel industry makes him a difficult sell to progressives whose calls for dramatic expansions of the social safety net look less radical by the day as the pandemic spreads. Indeed, Inslee himself sparred with Biden on the debate stage last year.

But the urgency of dealing with climate change, a crisis that requires a response similar to the pandemic, could persuade reluctant voters to back Biden in a bid to unseat Trump, a fossil fuel hardliner who’s scheduled to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accords the day after the November election. In a sign of the election’s global stakes, China, the world’s largest emitter, signaled this week it may postpone submitting its climate plan to the United Nations until after votes are cast.

The former vice president’s $1.7 trillion proposal to lower emissions paled in comparison to what Inslee, Warren or Sanders, whose $16 trillion Green New Deal marked easily the most ambitious plan of the race, proposed. Still, during the Super Tuesday blitz that all but secured Biden the nomination, one exit poll found 34% of voters who cited climate change as their top concern voted for the former vice president, compared to 28% who cast ballots for Sanders.

https://twitter.com/tysonbrody/status/1250427390586523649?s=20