Tip jar….some of our TOP comrades need it. Lots of TO’s and NR’s going around with the some of the Berners. I’m not one of them as I try not to get too personally involved, but still, looks like a second wave of Ides is coming.

Credit card interest rates are outrageously high. With @RepAOC, we are introducing legislation to challenge the greed of Wall Street and protect consumers across America. https://t.co/eFltL754AG

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 9, 2019

CNN has a hit piece on Bernie on teevee. Great materials for the GOP.

Looks like it was whispered to CNN by Neera Tanden and David Brock. It may backfire on them if he wins the nomination.

Julián Castro staffers become second 2020 Dem campaign to unionize https://t.co/GwyMy49jNI pic.twitter.com/u1So4H5u55

— The Hill (@thehill) May 9, 2019

And who started this trend? An old Jewish guy?

Thankfully the Dems Are Playing Hardball with the Left

Last month, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) introduced new rules intended to stymie electoral challenges from the left. The group announced that it would no longer give any work to consultants, pollsters, and other political professionals who lend their efforts to progressives and democratic socialist candidates seeking to depose Democratic Party incumbents, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did last summer when she unseated establishment Democrat Joe Crowley.

Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Ocasio-Cortez, are right to speak out against these measures, which are designed to weaken the Left. Since the left wing is already weaker, forcing professionals to choose between the Left and center means they’re likely to gravitate to the center to protect their own careers, starving the left wing of resources and expertise. The move is an attempt to leverage the self-interest of the professional political class against a political movement that threatens corporate profits and centrist dominance, which are extensively entangled.

One wonders, given the extreme resistance to the Left from the Democratic Party establishment, why progressives and democratic socialists should run as Democrats at all. Unfortunately, the unique characteristics of the US two-party system make it nearly impossible in many cases to run viable and impactful third-party campaigns. That means that in order to widely project a pro–working class message while still potentially winning a race, many progressive and democratic socialist candidates are compelled, for the time being, to run on the Democratic Party ballot line — that is, to run as putative members of a party that detests them.

The ballot-line approach presents two clear and present dangers: stonewalling by the party elite and cooptation into the party machinery. The Democratic Party knows its way around both. In this instance, likely acting out of sheer panic, it has opted for stonewalling.

But stonewalling has some advantages over cooptation for insurgent candidates genuinely interested in creating a new working-class political movement in defiance of the Democratic corporate consensus. If they won’t give you anything, you don’t owe them anything. By making it clear that the party won’t provide resources to the Left, Democrats force progressives and democratic socialists into a position of independence. That may make it somewhat harder to win elections, but in the long run, relative independence will serve the movement well — so long as it can sustain its popular momentum.

In fact, forced independence might actually compel progressive and left-wing candidates to adopt the very strategies that are necessary to build and sustain a mass base. If you can’t rely on a readymade political machine, you need to build a machine of your own. Instead of sharing the political professional class with its opponents in the Democratic Party, the Left will need to build its own army of experts and operators — an army that, once assembled and trained, can be deployed to other blacklisted campaigns.

By the same token, if you don’t have access to a network of elite donors, you need to find new ways of speaking to ordinary people that inspire them to fork over their hard-earned money. If you’re not getting fed, you don’t have to worry about biting the hand that feeds you. You can, and indeed must, stand for an ambitious politics that can get working people’s attention by promising to radically transform their lives: for Medicare for All, fully funded public childcare and education at all levels, a Green New Deal, massive social housing investment, a job guarantee with a living wage, and soaking the rich to pay for it all and redistribute our nation’s obscenely concentrated wealth.

Cutting off the Left therefore has the potential to backfire on the center, pushing candidates to be more courageously independent in order to win the hearts of the masses — the only way to make up for what they lack in top-down support. And in the process of running those audacious insurgent campaigns, progressive and democratic socialist politicians can raise the expectations of the working class and create new constituencies for policies and politics that the Democratic center dismisses out of hand.

TBT:

(play on the new legislation by Bernie and AOC)

I got this from WotB, good chart comparison of Biden and Sanders’ policies.

View post on imgur.com

BREAKING: Chelsea Manning released from Alexandria Detention Center after Grand Jury lapses. Chelsea has been subpoenaed to appear before another Grand Jury May 16, 2019. https://t.co/RW3pkKYAe3

— The Sparrow Project (@sparrowmedia) May 10, 2019

Good news…

Really, the biggest, boldest idea (other than war) the GOP has proposed is A Wall.

At this rate they’re gonna propose getting us to space w/ trebuchets.

They constantly hate, but have 0 real solutions for income inequality, healthcare, climate crisis, racial injustice, etc.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 9, 2019

In support of Rep Rashida Tlaib:

Rep. @RashidaTlaib: "I always tell people, this is your House. You tell us what to do and this is us telling this house what to do… Ten million petitions are being delivered today." https://t.co/TMVjilAYOG pic.twitter.com/Og2xb18zAN

— The Hill (@thehill) May 10, 2019

@Comey Good luck with that. https://t.co/mIv7a6ohRV

— Benny (@Benny05) May 10, 2019

House votes to overturn Trump ObamaCare move

The House voted Thursday to overturn one of President Trump’s key ObamaCare moves, advancing a bill that Democrats have framed as protecting people with pre-existing conditions.

Passed in a largely party-line vote of 230-183, the bill seeks to overturn guidance the Trump administration released last year expanding a program that allows states to innovate and waive certain ObamaCare rules.

Republicans argued that Democrats were simply trying to score political points with a bill that did not actually add new protections for people with preexisting conditions. Democrats, meanwhile, said that the legislation was needed to fight Trump’s efforts to weaken the health law’s current protections for those with preexisting conditions.

Four Republicans voted with Democrats for the bill, including Reps. John Katko (N.Y) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), who face potentially tough reelection races next year, and Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (Wis.) and Chris Smith (N.J.).

BREAKING: Common Defense surveyed our 125,000 members to see how politically engaged progressive military veterans are feeling about the 2020 primary.

Here’s what we found:

1) @BernieSanders 29.1% (up 5.1% from Jan)

2) @ewarren 20.7% (up 10.7% !!)

3) @JoeBiden 18.2% (up 0.2%)

— Common Defense (@commondefense) May 9, 2019

From November of 1990. Bernie Sanders never had to "evolve". pic.twitter.com/Wdw7MYBYKZ

— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) May 10, 2019