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The Bernie Sanders Left Wants More From Democrats’ New Message

Democratic congressional leadership unveiled a new messaging strategy this month, dubbed “A Better Deal,” built around an economic agenda intended to win back voters who spurned them last year for Donald Trump. But some labor activists, including those already frustrated with the party establishment in the aftermath of 2016’s grueling primary, are not buying everything the party is selling.

Our Revolution, the organization spun out of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, and other left-leaning groups argue the Better Deal could be even better, by including support for Medicare for all, free tuition for all, immigration reform, investments in jobs like care work, and an emphasis on strengthening union rights.

Xochitl Hinojosa, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said that these policies are, for the most part, included in the DNC’s 2016 platform and that the new messaging is focused on a legislative agenda in Congress, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

But progressive activists like Our Revolution president Nina Turner, who rallied against the new messaging outside DNC headquarters last week, are pleading with Democratic leadership to make more aggressively progressive policy arguments ahead of the next election cycle.

“All we’re trying to do is to put the Democratic party on notice,” Turner said to a crowd of supporters last Tuesday as she tried to deliver an alternative platform considerably to the left of what Schumer and other Democrats had announced that day.

Former Clinton Adviser: Sanders and His Followers Are ‘Detrimental to the Democratic Party’

A former top Hillary Clinton adviser made it clear on Monday that he will not come around to welcoming Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and his supporters into the Democratic Party.

In an 11-tweet rant, Peter Daou, a strategist and internet director for Clinton’s presidential run in 2008, railed against Sanders and his followers, writing that they are “detrimental” to the Democratic party.

Daou began with a jab at Sanders’ popularity before diving into the latest actions that provoked his ire. The Clinton supporter accused Sanders of being a “destructive force.” He added that Sanders and his “diehard followers” are targeting rising stars in the Democratic Party, including Sens. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.).

Daou also accused Sanders supporters of continuing to use “rightwing” talking points against Clinton.

Maybe ‘Bernie Bros’ Just Don’t Like Wall Street Democrats

There is a stream of thinking running through my Twitter feed today emanating from the die-hard Democrats I follow. The gist of it is that it is Bernie Sanders’s fault that Hillary Clinton lost the election, because his ”wing” (read: those who believe what Democrats used to) dismisses black people, and now the Democratic party should excise and shun Bernie Sanders as it heads toward the 2020 presidential election.

Yeah, why would we want to pay any heed to the guy who was packing arenas, generating miles-long lines, and raising millions of dollars $27 at a time? What are we thinking about, winning elections or something?

In reply to a tweet about a story in Mic about Sen. Kamala Harris that reads “Kamala Harris, a rising Democratic star, faces a problem: the Bernie-wing of the party is skeptical of her,” a black writer for HuffPost offers, “She’s a Black woman and last year that demographic voted against Sanders at the highest rates. That “wing” has big probs w Black voters.”

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Some Bernie supporters’ problem with Senator Kamala Harris isn’t that she’s a woman who is black, it’s that she’s beholden to the men with the green. While Democrats picked Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the primaries, the general election proved to be hostile to the Wall Street-backed candidate. If they want to regain the White House, Democrats should consider how to earn the most votes in the states they need to win rather than who’ll get the most black votes in the states they’re guaranteed to lose.

Stop Trying to Hold Bernie Sanders Accountable Every Time a Progressive on the Internet Has an Opinion

This is so stupid:

The concerted attacks on Kamala Harris from Sanders fervent supporters put him, IMO, on the spot. Good journos would ask him about this.
— Armando (@armandodkos) August 1, 2017
And it’s a favorite tactic of “liberals,” ie centrists, ie neoliberals. The logic is astoundingly bad, and can be expressed as follows:

1. Some person on the Internet has an opinion.

2. That person is a progressive, and a likely Bernie Sanders supporter.

3. Bernie should be held accountable for that person’s opinion.

I don’t even want to get into the Kamala Harris issue—we’ll do that soon, I promise—because this is about the absurd standards of political accountability that people like Armando (an editor at Daily Kos, per his Twitter profile) are attempting to propagate. You know when it’s fair to question Sanders on negativity directed at Harris? When he says something negative about her. Which he hasn’t.

Chelsea Manning Goes After Kamala Harris, Joy Reid on Twitter

“America’s Toughest Sheriff” Violated Court Order to Stop Racially Profiling Latinos

Joe Arpaio—the former sheriff from Maricopa County, Arizona, who famously ordained himself “America’s toughest sheriff”—was found guilty of criminal contempt for violating a federal court order mandating that Arpaio and his deputies refrain from racially profiling Latinos with traffic stops and detentions, based on suspicions about their immigration status.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton said on Monday that Arpaio demonstrated a “flagrant disregard” for the order, rejecting the former sheriff’s defense that the order was unclear and the violations unintentional. Arpaio, who is 85, could face up to six months in jail, and is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 5.

An Even Better Deal

“With the 2018 election cycle rapidly approaching, Democrats have an opportunity to draw an even sharper contrast with the GOP by embracing the kind of bold populism that this moment demands.”

Can the Age of Trump Spur Medicare for All?

“A single program launched by a single state is better than none. And it just might work.”

Trump Bulldozes Environmental Laws to Pave Way for ‘Xenophobic’ Border Wall

The Trump administration has already taken aim at a number of Obama-era environmental rules that protect the public water supply and safeguard children from dangerous pollutants at the behest of Big Oil. Now, he is trampling the environment to make good on one of his central campaign promises: a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Former NAACP Presidents Ben Jealous and Kweisi Mfume Deliver Remarks at 108th National Convention

Good morning, NAACP. It is good to be home. Hey, I’m doing good, I’m doing good. Hey, you all are gonna make me cry.

Welcome. Welcome to the home of Thurgood Marshall. The home of Clarence Mitchell. The home of Juanita Jackson Mitchell. Our President Jackson, our President McMillan, and the home of Frederick Douglass. The city that he ran away from and then came back to work as a builder. And we in the Civil Rights Movement, we got our charge from Frederick Douglass a long time ago. See, after we passed the 13th Amendment, the 14thAmendment and the 15th Amendment, it was Frederick Douglass who stood up and in his speech on composite nationality, his tirade against the Chinese exclusion act, not dissimilar to these Latino exclusion acts that have been passed in Arizona and Alabama, the NAACP has been fighting against this for a long time now.

But in times like these, when the black vote was rising south of the Mason-Dixon and immigrants of color were increasing and the far right wing conservatives—Donald Trump—had lost their minds, Frederick Douglass stood up and he said, “You know we didn’t come through a great war and slavery in the Southeast, just to watch you all enslave somebody else in the Southwest.” And he said you know, if you believe majorities matter, and I believe they do, then it should matter that 4/5ths of the world is colored people, and only 1/5th is white.

And then Frederick Douglass laid out his vision for our nation. It’s the vision that we have pursued as a civil rights movement ever since, especially in this organization which literally rose from the ashes of the old abolitionist movement. Frederick Douglass said every nation has a unique destiny, and that destiny is based on a nation’s character, and a nation’s character is defined by that nation at its best. Not its worst: Donald Trump.

Scandinavia In Maryland?

States may be about to take the challenge of providing universal health coverage into their own hands.