Hey Democrats: Take a Hint from Labour and Ocasio-Cortez and Try Moving Left

On July 18, House Democrats unveiled their new campaign slogan ahead of the 2018 midterm elections: For The People. At first glance, the message may appear similar to “For The Many, Not The Few,” the title of the manifesto put forward in 2017 by the UK’s Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn. And while both slogans place the public as the center of political action, the Democratic Party still has much further to go in comparison to Labour, which embraced a bold, redistributive agenda as a means to grow its power.

The Labour manifesto called for such policies as nationalizing rail and electric utilities, getting rid of tuition for public colleges, banning fracking, investing in clean energy, controlling rent increases and massively taxing the rich and corporations. The Democratic Party establishment, meanwhile, has so far steered clear of adopting such unabashedly left proposals.

Yet the recent primary victories of democratic socialist candidates such as Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato in Pittsburgh and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York against powerful incumbents within the Democratic machine signal that the energy and enthusiasm within the party lies on its left flank. These candidates, along with many other democratic socialists across the country, have run on platforms that are largely in line with Labour’s manifesto.

In response to the victories by candidates such as Ocasio-Cortez, many U.S. pundits and political insiders have either written off the rise of democratic socialism as marginal or warned against the Democratic Party embracing “extremism.”

Such a reaction is familiar. Soon after UK Prime Minister Theresa May called for a surprise general election to take place in June 2017, pundits across the political spectrum repeated a narrative reducing Corbyn to a scruffy, unelectable old-school socialist who would return Labour to the electoral obscurity of the 1980s rather than a viable alternative to the Conservative status quo.

The accidental leaking of the Labour Party’s manifesto during the 2017 general election seemed to give Corbyn’s critics another chance to accuse him of disorganization and incompetence. However, the leak ended up working in Labour’s favor, as the electorate was able to understand Corbyn’s vision of a progressive Labour-led Britain at face value and without spin. The manifesto proved popular: Labour’s poll ratings instantly rose, with 7 in 10 voters welcoming its pledges.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Bail has criminalized poverty and undermined the tenet of ‘innocent before proven guilty’

n a country in which we pride ourselves on the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” we should not be keeping hundreds of thousands of people locked up before they have actually been convicted of a crime.

And yet in 2016, more than 65 percent of the over 700,000 people in county or city jails on any given day in the United States were “unconvicted” — meaning that more than 400,000 people were in jail who had not been convicted of a crime, often because they lack the money to pay bail. In other words, we have criminalized poverty.

That is not acceptable. Pretrial detention should be not based on how much money a person has, what kind of mood the judge is in on a given day, or even what judge the case happens to come before.

The Elite Fixation With Russiagate

No single act of Donald Trump’s presidency has engendered more criticism than his performance at the Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin. For declining to endorse US intelligence claims that the Kremlin meddled in our election and faulting both countries for the poor state of US-Russia relations, Trump was roundly accused of “shameful,” “disgraceful,” and “treasonous” behavior that has sparked a full-blown “national security crisis.”

But does the American public at large share the prevailing elite assessment? Save for a White House vigil led by two longtime Hillary Clinton staffers and a few scattered rallies—and in stark contrast to mass protests over Trump’s misogyny, Muslim ban, and zero-tolerance immigration policy—Americans have not poured into the streets to confront the “crisis.” A poll by The Hill and the HarrisX polling company found 54 percent support for Trump’s now-scuttled plan for a follow-up summit with Putin at the White House. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump’s post-Helsinki approval rating slightly increased to 45 percent. While the uptick does not necessarily signal an embrace of Trump’s behavior, it is not difficult to see why his numbers did not plummet. In a recent Gallup poll on problems facing the country, the “Situation with Russia” was such a marginal concern that it did not even register. While an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 64 percent believe Trump has not been tough enough on Russia, it also saw a near-even split on whether Putin is a foe or an ally, and 59 percent support for better relations.

The gap between elite and public priorities highlights an endemic problem that long predates Trump. Since his election, however, the elite fixation on alleged Russian meddling and the president’s suspected collusion has exacerbated that divide.

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Amid fervent speculation that Trump may be a Kremlin asset, Israel’s brazen (and actually documented) foreign meddling barely registers, joining an innumerable number of critical issues that the Russiagate frenzy has sidelined. It has gotten so extreme that even Trump’s new threats of war on Iran, coupled with an escalating administration campaign to destabilize its government, has been ignored or even downplayed as an effort to distract us from his Russia woes. But in the absence of publicly available evidence, and an outburst of both panic and chauvinist warmongering, it is arguably we who are distracting ourselves. Under one of the most dangerous administrations in US history, that willful and heedless diversion may be the far most serious national-security crisis we face

The United States Was Failing Long Before Donald Trump

The American experiment in democracy may be coming to an unseemly end.

Former top Sanders adviser assisting in Manafort prosecution: report

Tad Devine, a consultant who served as the chief strategist for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential bid, will assist federal prosecutors in the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Devine previously worked with Manafort on behalf of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. A partner in his current consulting firm told BuzzFeed News in a statement that Devine had been asked to assist in Manafort’s prosecution.

“The Special Counsel has asked Tad Devine to assist in the prosecution of their case against Paul Manafort regarding his firm’s work on media consulting on past political campaigns in Ukraine,” reads the statement provided by Julian Mulvey, a partner at Devine Mulvey Longabaugh.

“When the Special Counsel sought assistance from us in its ongoing investigation, we readily provided it,” it adds.

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The statement provided to BuzzFeed by Devine’s firm says that it had been “assured by the special counsel’s office that we have no legal exposure and did not act unlawfully.”

Connecticut Is a Mess. Can Ned Lamont Clean It Up?

Twelve years after his epic battle with Joe Lieberman, he’s running for governor.

Whom Is the DSA Reaching? The Teens.

Since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise primary victory late last month, there has been a renewed interest in the Democratic Socialists of America. Outlets have run pieces exploring the group and its positions, and thousands have signed up to join its ranks. Across the country, DSA-endorsed candidates like Julia Salazar are challenging the status quo of party-backed incumbency. Even Cynthia Nixon has embraced the socialist label.

This has also been a banner year for high-school organizing, from the students in Parkland, Florida, taking on the NRA to the high schoolers organizing against Chicago’s $95 million police academy. High-school students’ getting involved in organizing and activism is nothing new, but some students are taking their resistance even further—they’re calling themselves socialists. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Salazar and thousands of people across the country who have joined DSA, these students are committing themselves to a politics that imagines a world where everyone can live comfortably with access to free education and health care, where no one lives in fear of immigration agents or police, and where poverty has been eradicated.

Decades ago, a generation of students learned to fear the specter of communism as public schools bore a purge of teachers at the Cold War’s height. Now, in high schools across the country, teens are not only joining the Democratic Socialists of America, they’re starting up chapters in their schools.

Democrats Shouldn’t Defend Bad Policies Just to Resist Trump

When Trump strikes a populist tone, expose him as a fraud—don’t back the corporate stance.

Crops Are Dying. Forests Are Burning. This Summer’s Heat Wave Has Fueled Natural Disasters Around the World.

This has been a summer of soaring temperatures and catastrophic fires. It has been so hot all over the world that even the Arctic is getting scorched: temperatures in Deadhorse, Alaska, which is along the Arctic Coast, reached 80 degrees on Wednesday—the average high for July is 56 degrees. And Europe saw its second hottest June on record.

In fact, June had higher than normal temperatures across the globe. The average temperature worldwide was the fifth-hottest on record for the month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The ten warmest Junes on record have occurred since 2005.

Scientists have no doubts that climate change is driving the searing temperatures. “There’s no question human influence on climate is playing a huge role in this heatwave,” Myles Allen, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, told the Guardian this week.

Here’s a look at the climate

Researchers Mapped “Marine Wilderness” for the First Time Ever—And the Outcome is Bleak

For most people, the term “wilderness” evokes imagery of the terrestrial sort: coniferous forests, sandy deserts, rolling grasslands, icy white tundra. But now, for the first time ever, a group of international researchers has mapped wilderness of the marine variety, specifically, areas in the ocean with little impact from human activity. And—surprise, surprise!—they discovered there isn’t much area left.

In a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, the researchers found that only 13 percent of the world’s oceans can be classified as “wilderness,” and the areas are primarily located in the Arctic, Antarctic, and high seas. In all, it’s a total area of about 55 million square kilometers, or about three times the size of Russia. (The story on land is at least slightly better, where about 23 percent, or 30.1 million square kilometers, has been classified as wilderness.)

What’s even worse is that less than five percent—or about 2.7 million square kilometers—of marine wilderness is currently protected. That’s just roughly an area the same size as Argentina. The immense vulnerability of marine wilderness is largely a result of the fact that most of it falls outside of national jurisdictions and in international waters, meaning that no single country can protect it and rather countries must cooperate to do so.

Scott Walker trailing Dem challenger by 13 points

Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) is trailing Democratic challenger Tony Evers by 13 points in the upcoming Wisconsin gubernatorial race, according to a new poll released Thursday.

Of the registered voters surveyed in the NBC News/Marist poll, 41 percent backed Walker in the race, compared to the 54 percent who supported Evers.

When asked if Walker deserves to be reelected, 34 percent of the voters agreed with the statement. Sixty-one percent said a new person should be given a chance, and 5 percent were unsure.

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— Cathy Myers (@CathyMyersWI) July 27, 2018

Clinton’s loss in Wisconsin emblematic of Dem Party’s ‘abandonment’ of working class

Author Dan Kauffman on Thursday argued that Hillary Clinton’s loss in Wisconsin during the 2016 presidential race was reflective of the Democratic Party’s abandoning the labor movement and the working class.

“It’s quite well known, she [Clinton] never campaigned during the general election in Wisconsin, which was a shock to many people,” Kauffman, who wrote “The Fall of Wisconsin,” told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball on “Rising.”

“It’s emblematic of the abandonment of the national Democratic Party for things like the labor movement. The real core, the grassroots, the rank and file people, the foot soldiers in elections, they have been abandoned,” he continued.

“It wasn’t just Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t just Hillary Clinton. During the recall election against Scott Walker in 2012, President Barack Obama did not come to Wisconsin to show any kind of support for the protesters or the Democratic candidate,” he said.

Kauffman went on to explain how the Democratic Party establishment used to be more aligned with working-class interests. He claimed that changed during former President Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House.

“The donors and the funding has moved more toward professional, managerial class, and that was shown in Wisconsin,” he said. “They [the Democratic Party] didn’t really do that much if anything to help, and these were teachers, corrections officers, I mean really just the bedrock of citizens that formed the bulk of their voters.”

Emails show Columbus officers may have targeted Stormy Daniels for arrest: report

A series of emails sent by a Columbus, Ohio, police officer suggest that adult-film star Stormy Daniels may have been targeted when she was arrested at a strip club earlier this month, according to a new report.

Daniels, who is suing President Trump over claims related to her alleged affair with him, was arrested during a performance at Columbus’ Sirens Gentlemen’s Club, a strip club, on charges of illegally touching a patron. The charges were dropped later in the afternoon.

But emails obtained by the Fayette Advocate through open records requests reveal that one of the arresting officers, Shana Keckley, used her personal email account to send herself photos and information about Daniels two days before the arrest.

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The emails appear to contradict the police department’s statement following the arrest, which claimed that Daniels and two other performers were arrested “as part of a long-term investigation into allegations of human trafficking, prostitution, & other vice related violations.”

A Columbus police spokesperson told CNN that an internal investigation into the arrest is underway, and declined to comment further.

Imran Khan Declares Victory in Historic Elections: Pakistan Has Chosen Meaningful Change Over a Failed Status Quo

Imran Khan has claimed victory for his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) in an historic election for Pakistan. The PTI represents a populist swing away from the legacy mainstream parties PML-N and PPP that both fared poorly during the election. Additionally, religious extremist parties fared particularly poorly compared to the previous two elections and also when contrasted with the expectations that many theocratic parties set for themselves prior to polling day. Lastly, the deeply controversial MQM ended up losing both seats and electoral momentum in its Karachi heartland, surrendering its erstwhile momentum to PTI.

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While the final votes are still being counted, PTI’s decisive victory across Pakistan’s regions and major cities is indicative of a wider moment for radical change that has been embraced throughout the nation. In this sense, Imran Khan’s victory is a genuine national victory for all of the regions of Pakistan.

Imran Khan began his victory speech by thanking voters throughout Pakistan for defying threats and turning up at polling stations throughout the 25th of July. In particular, Imran Khan paid tribute to the people of the province of Balochistan who came out to vote in spite of a Daesh claimed terrorist attack early in the day.

Pakistan’s new Prime Minister continued highlighting his goals for reform in Pakistan stating that resources will be more evenly distributed between and within Pakistan’s diverse provinces, while offering young people a better education and job opportunities represents the key to a better future for the country as a whole. Imran Khan promised that the perennially difficult matter of effectively collecting and distributing the proceeds of taxation will be dramatically improved under a PTI government. He also pledged to turn opulent government owned buildings into either public education facilities or tourist attractions that can become revenue generating sources for the wider nation.

From his victory speech:

The weak are dying of hunger. I will try my best – all of my policies will be made to raise our weaker classes, for our labourers … for our poor farmers, who work all year and get no money … 45 percent of children have stunted growth, they don’t reach the right height, or their brains don’t develop.

There are countries with less than 25 million people, and we have that many children out of school.

My effort will be that we try our best to raise these people up, that all of our policies be focused on human development. I want the whole country toi think like this.

No country can prosper when there is a small island of rich people, and a sea of poor.