Before Bernie Sanders came out today another speaker, Sara Nelson said that yesterday in Philadelphia someone in the crowd shouted “It should’ve been you!” And Bernie replied, “It was me. I’m here—with you.” Goddamn. This man. My cup runneth over. Hell of a Sunday in Cambridge. pic.twitter.com/3i9eO9Ma6i

— Chaloe Elizabeth Tyler (@chaloelikesthis) August 21, 2022

AOC is the Democrats’ best shot against Trump in 2024

When Barack Obama came out of nowhere to win his Senate seat in 2004, it almost felt preordained. As if he was the person we had been waiting for to breathe fresh air into the Democratic Party.

Flash forward to 2018, and the meteoric rise of a 29-year-old bartender from Queens feels eerily similar. She has been unafraid, unapologetic and unwilling to bend to the will of Washington. She is a force to be reckoned with, and in 2024 Democrats are going to need her force to reckon with Republicans.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is less of a personality and more of a movement. Yes, the smart, photogenic congresswoman is the face of the rising progressive movement, but she is also the future of the Democratic Party. AOC has cultivated a following beyond politics. She’s an influencer in its purest form. Her ability to relate to her supporters and allow them a glimpse into her private life is a blueprint for Democrats trying to act less like mannequins and more like humans.

She’s the voice of a movement that began after the banks were bailed out by the government, while homeowners were left to default. The simplicity with which she talks about everyday struggles hints that she’s not just a persona for consumption. She isn’t beholden to corporations, is a prodigious small-dollar fundraiser, and could out-Trump Trump like no other politician has been able to.

If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the Godfather, Ocasio-Cartez is Michael Corleone. As the architect of Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage and numerous other programs that are now mainstream, Bernie’s place in history has already been solidified. While Sanders may disagree with some of the progressives in his caucus, his worth carries major weight. Bernie passing the torch to AOC and recruiting her to run for president would be bold and would strengthen and solidify her base of supporters before she even gets out of the gate.

AOC wields a superpower that is rarely found in Washington: She isn’t afraid to lose. Her 2018 victory wasn’t just historic, it was shocking, and felt predestined — much like when we first saw a brilliant speaker with a funny name and big ears remind us that through hope and change we could put our country on a new course.

AOC has the ability to tell the story of her generation. She’s Barack Obama if Barack Obama was an actual progressive. I love Obama, but he was a moderate who sounded like a progressive.

Ocasio-Cortez represents the possibilities and opportunities that make our country great. Where else could a 29-year-old bartender upset a political heavyweight and become a symbol for her generation? AOC was never supposed to win her race. Few gave her a chance, but a funny thing happened: Voters loved her honesty, youth and humble beginnings. Voters were sick of career politicians who rarely came back to their districts. So they voted Joe Crowley out and AOC in. That wasn’t luck, that was fate. In a Democratic Party that looks more like a Golden Girls spin-off than a reflection of our rich diversity, AOC has become the face of a generation.

It would have been easy for her to walk into Congress and hire nothing but communications staff. It would have been easy for her to sell out and do the cash grab. She could have publicly made Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) lives a living hell just to show off for her supporters.

Instead, she did her homework and tried to fly under the radar while learning the nuances of Congress and the levers of power that run it. She did exactly what you would want your number one draft pick to do: She prepared for the moment. Her tough questioning of corporations and industry leaders has been a viral hit that adds to her credentials. AOC rarely backs down from a fight.

The congresswoman holds no punches when it comes to Sens. Joe Manchin (D- W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). Echoing my previous calls for Sinema to face a primary challenge, AOC publicly declared that she “should be” primaried and said this of Manchin:

“This idea that one person gets to go on television and provide weak arguments as to why they are blocking the basic civil rights of our Americans, and journalists don’t push back, and our party leadership doesn’t push back, and the president doesn’t push back forcefully — that makes me mad.”

A new CNN poll finds that 75 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters want the party to nominate someone other than President Biden in 2024. Should President Biden announce that he will not seek a second term, AOC would represent the bridge that he hoped to create. Much like Barack Obama talked about his student loan debt, AOC can uniquely talk about the struggles of a forgotten generation waiting for someone to speak up for them.

If Jan. 6 was a dry run for what we’ll see in 2024, we need an inspirational and generational candidate to fight back. Democrats need AOC to meet this historic moment.

The country needs a fresh start. We need someone who can inspire us but also look to heal some of our wounds. Most importantly, the country needs a president who never wanted to be president. I don’t necessarily agree with everything the congresswoman believes, that’s called healthy dialogue. But what I believe is that when no one is looking, she’d do what’s right for the country, not what’s right for her bank account.

There is no denying that AOC would boost GOP turnout as a result of coverage on right wing networks built to scare elderly white voters. But she would electrify the party’s base, turn out the youth at record levels and bring the party together by acknowledging the threat posed by electing Trump Republicans.

In the age of social media and quick sound bites, no Democrat is more prepared to embarrass a bully like Donald Trump or Florida governor Ron DeSantis and return some chutzpah to the Democratic Party. There will be no going high when they go low anymore. It appears the only rule is there are no rules, and AOC is ready to enter the cage and fight for our democracy.

If anyone is prepared to unify the Democratic Party and put the focus back on the working class, it’s AOC. Republicans laugh, Democrats fawn, but if voters trust her, we could finally be looking at the first woman president.

It’s not just Democrats that need Ocasio-Cortez to electrify a nation and ensure Trump or DeSantis doesn’t find his way into the White House. We all need a leader who knows the price of gas, can tell you the cost of milk and still remembers trying to figure out how she could keep the lights on.

America doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to the generations that will come after us. It is our obligation, in the face of fascism to put up a candidate who isn’t just different than the Republicans, but is disgusted by Republicans and prepared to say why.

There will never be another Barack Obama, but I have a feeling we’ll be saying the same about AOC. When opportunity meets preparation and history creates the moment, the cream of the crop always rises, leaving everyone else behind.

Democrats want a fighter, not a politician. They want someone who punches back and isn’t afraid to say what they mean.

As much as there is much to agree with, the Dems would consider AOC another Mondale or McGovern. She’s different from them, but I don’t think the DNC would support such a candidate like her.

Dr. Fauci announces resignation as NIAID director and chief medical advisor to Biden.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) August 22, 2022

I’m guessing he’s had enough. He’s over 80 now. I read in another tweet he’s leaving in December.

Shocking: America's richest senator doesn't want the IRS to hire more auditors. https://t.co/TRJvhI6aVy

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 21, 2022

Liz Cheney: Goodbye and Good Riddance

The fact that Daddy Dick was there, the dark eminence who soiled the Republic and inflated executive power with drugged glee, said it all. This was the occasion of his daughter’s electoral defeat at the hands of another Republican, Harriet Hageman. Neoconservative bumbler and part of an enterprise that loves war and cherishes the buccaneering free market, Liz Cheney was facing final judgment at the hands of voters in Wyoming for her belligerent position against Donald Trump.

Cheney had hoped to purge the GOP of Trumpist influence by simply reiterating her own toxic alternative, the very sort that did much to bring about the success of Trump in the first place. All that mattered was reiterating her hatred of orange-haired ogre and his alleged role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

This was a bit much given how she had done little by way of condemning Trump for any earlier misdeeds even as the GOP was being transformed. As a matter of fact, her voting record for Trump’s proposals comes in at an astonishing, distinctly non-dissenting 93%.

Former Republican Rep. Justin Amash issued a strong rebuke last year regarding her newly fashioned image in the party. She could hardly be seen as “some sort of hero”, having come to the anti-Trump show belatedly late. She might have joined him in his earlier warnings that “the president’s approach could lead to things like violence, could lead to a lot of animosity and contempt and all sorts of things that would be harmful to our country.”

During her time in Congress, Cheney also showed hostility to raising the minimum wage, voted against the Equality Act and the Equal Rights Amendment, the Voting Rights Act, the George Floyd Act and the Build Back Better and Infrastructure bills. And that’s just a modest sampling.

Cheney’s position as vice chair on the January 6 committee was purely decorative. In getting her on board, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could leave an impression that the investigation into the former president was somehow bipartisan, bringing in both Democrats and the GOP. In the meantime, Cheney could play the principled constitutional defender, enraging members of the party that never forgave her.

In losing her voter base, Cheney seemed to have won, inexplicably, a few admirers. Former US Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, hoped she would not “disappear from public life.” She had “displayed more courage and integrity than almost any other member of her party – indeed, given the pressure she was under, perhaps more than any lawmaker now alive.”

It is worth noting that Trump, for all his monstrous defects and vandalising tendencies, never took his country into an illegal war nor endorsed a massive, illegal warrantless surveillance program of citizens. For all his Caesar-like pretensions, he was not an adventurist in the way President George W. Bush was, nor committedly Machiavellian in the manner of Dick Cheney. Besides stealing the 2000 election, a point virtually no one sober enough after the fact amongst Democrats and Republican strategists can deny, Bush went on to destabilise and crater the Middle East and give a very complete account about how dismal the neoconservative cabal could be.

In due course, the neocons, with the Cheney mindset running the show, converted the US government into a forward base for forced democratisation even as they were destroying democracy – or an impression of it – at home. (A plantation, property-minded republic with a constitution to match was never intended as a democracy.) It made Dick Cheney’s plea for his daughter’s re-election darkly laughable. “In our nation’s 246-year history,” went the campaign adfronted by Father Dick, “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

Daughter Liz is hoping for bigger, more ruinous things. In her graceless non-concession speech, she promised that “our work is far from over”. This project, she suggested, lay in the battle against “the conspiracy and the lies” regarding the 2020 elections. She promised to “do whatever it takes” to deny any pathway for Trump’s return to the White House.

This immediately had commentators jotting down options. Did that mean that Cheney would have a stab at the office herself? (She subsequently revealed on NBC’s Today that she was toying with the idea.) Any primary run against Trump would seem positively quixotic, though she did allude, irrelevantly, to one of the Republic’s most remarkable and devious minds as a source of inspiration. “Abraham Lincoln was defeated in elections for the Senate and the House before he won the most important election of all.”

Nothing proved sacred to Cheney, who also mentioned Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, “That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and a government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Pity those last words seemed to have been ignored by her family.

In her dig through Civil War history, not even Ulysses S. Grant was spared. The Union General, instead of heading back to the safety of Washington, decided to head to Richmond “and the heart of Lee’s army. Refusing to retreat, he pressed on to victory.”

Bringing the spirits of Lincoln and Grant into play, along with the nonsense of the US being “the best hope of freedom on earth”, was in spectacularly poor taste. The Cheney family has made a truly corking effort in shredding the Republic Lincoln tried saving. Along the way, they managed to lose a constituency. There was never much in the way of principle here – except the one that only ever matters for the Cheneys: power, and how to possess it.

A few themes in this piece:
1) Obviously Maloney has a huge money advantage
2) He has also won over some prominent progressive supporters of Mondaire Jones with an electability argument

— Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) August 22, 2022

I've gotten some criticism for using Rockland County Dem Chair John Gromada as my example of a progressive with electability fears.

But @Elijah4Senate, a Working Families Party endorsee, had a similar take. WFP state Sen. Peter Harckham is also with Maloney.

— Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) August 22, 2022

The key concern is about how Republicans can use Biaggi's two tweets about police officers in 2020, one of which called them "soulless."

Rockland County is home to a lot of cops, including the county's Republican executive, Ed Day. pic.twitter.com/6d6Oh7cJxS

— Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) August 22, 2022

Biaggi has become critical of the phrase "defund the police" for tactical reasons.

I pressed Biaggi on the underlying policy: Is reducing police funding good policy?

Her answer: "It depends." pic.twitter.com/61I4FhVUTT

— Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) August 22, 2022

To me, this is the real argument that leftists should honestly be making: That the long-term arc is more important than short-term political losses.

Consider the parallels to the conservative movement, which accepted Barry Goldwater's loss in 1964 as the price of future gains.

— Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) August 22, 2022

"Literally, my involvement lasted seconds. OK?"
— Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson admits that he was involved in the effort to deliver lists of #FakeElectors to Vice President Mike Pence on the day of the #January6thInsurrection pic.twitter.com/5xShw0ZyYD

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) August 22, 2022

Mandela Barnes needs to use this against Ron Johnson. He is a danger to society.

Except for:
-extending child care credits
-Hearing and visual aids and oral care are still expensive, why aren't they part of Medicare?
-IRA is useless when it comes to EV's; over 70% current vehicles are exempt from the tax credits
-Not cancelling parts or all of student debt

— Benny🌹 (@Benny06) August 22, 2022

And Senators Manchin and Sinema aren’t accepting big donations from special interests such as hedge funds and energy companies.

— Benny🌹 (@Benny06) August 22, 2022

Bedingfield and her communications crew do not know how to communicate ethically and cleanly. The GOP could turn all of the “special interest” BS on the Dems on a dime. See jcitybone’s post about Dems in bed with pharma.

Dallas-Ft Worth Experiencing Flash Floods

Flash floods struck the Dallas-Fort Worth area overnight into Monday, with flooded roads requiring rescue efforts as abandoned cars floating down inundated streets. In some areas, the rainfall totals would be considered a 1-in-1,000-year flood.

10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint
Rain continues to fall in and around Dallas; some rainfall gauges in the area have recorded more than 10 inches thus far. A record-breaking 3.01 inches of rain was also recorded in one hour at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The National Weather Service in Fort Worth warned of continued risk for “life-threatening flash flooding,” extending its flash flood warning in and around Dallas County until 1 p.m. Central time. According to the warning, at least 10 inches of rain have fallen, with 2 to 4 inches still to come. The risk of damage from the floods is “considerable,” it said, warning residents not to drive on flooded roads and to move immediately to higher ground. Flash flood warnings have also been issued for Fort Worth and Canton, Tex.

The downpour marked the latest such flood that has occurred over the past few weeks across the United States. In one week alone, three 1-in-1,000-year rain events occurred — inundating St. Louis, eastern Kentucky and southeastern Illinois. While controversial, the term is used to describe a rainfall event that is expected once in every 1,000 years, meaning it has just a 0.1 percent chance of happening in any given year.

Human-driven climate change has been found to increase the frequency of such high precipitation events — a warmer atmosphere, capable of holding more moisture, can produce heavier rain. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2022 report, the rate of extreme precipitation events that cause severe flooding is expected to increase in the future.

How two 1-in-1,000-year rain events hit the U.S. in two days

Fox Weather reporter Robert Ray, who was reporting on the flooding in Dallas, found himself rescuing a woman who accidentally drove into a flooded intersection.

“She literally, as I was standing here setting up for the shot, guys, pulled in and didn’t realize it,” Ray told Fox Weather. “The next thing you know, her car was floating. So, I went out there and tried to push her vehicle as best I could.”

Several water rescues were ongoing Monday across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As of 8 a.m. local time, Dallas Fire and Rescue had responded to 141 water-related emergencies, according to Jennifer J. Moreno, a spokesperson with the city’s emergency management office. By 10 a.m., the Fort Worth Fire Department was responding to 25 high water rescue calls, and Dallas police were responding to an additional 43 “high water calls.”

@LieparDestin hope you and JD are OK!