Category Archives: Bernie Sanders

9/18 The Notorous RBG Has Left the Planet With Her Justice Necklace; Evening OT

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice and trailblazer for women’s legal rights.
1933 – 2020

We got the news today, oh boy.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/416004-supreme-court-justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-dies

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal leader of the Supreme Court and a trailblazing champion of women’s rights, died Friday. She was 87 years old.

The Supreme Court said in a statement that Ginsburg died “surrounded by her family at her home in Washington, D.C., due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer.”

Seen as a moderate when President Bill Clinton nominated her to the bench in 1993, Ginsburg went on to leave a lasting mark in the realm of gender equality, civil liberties and pay equity, and grew to achieve improbable late-in-life recognition as a pop culture icon and hero of the progressive movement.

Her first major opinion as a justice came in 1996 when she wrote the majority decision in United States v. Virginia. The ruling struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s 157-year-old policy of male-only admissions as unconstitutional, and set a stricter legal standard for government action that treats men and women differently.

“Women seeking and fit for a VMI-quality education cannot be offered anything less under the state’s obligation to afford them genuinely equal protection,” Ginsburg wrote in the 7-1 decision.

Ginsburg also gained renown for her cogent and sharply worded dissents.

According to Linda Greenhouse, a longtime Supreme Court reporter and analyst for The New York Times, it was through Ginsburg’s dissenting opinions during the mid-2000s that she “found her voice, and used it.”

One such dissent came in 2007 after the court ruled 5-4 on procedural grounds to bar a pay discrimination claim brought by former Goodyear Tire employee Lilly Ledbetter.

Ginsburg took the relatively rare step of reading her dissent from the bench to signal the intensity of her disagreement, with the 5-foot-1-inch tall justice donning a gold-embroidered black jabot for the occasion. It would not be the final word on the case, however.

In 2009, President Obama signed his first official legislation with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which effectively overturned the Supreme Court’s decision by making it easier to file pay discrimination suits. Ginsburg kept a framed copy of the bill, signed by Obama, in her chambers.

Though Ginsburg became the high court’s leading liberal, she was best friends with its leading conservative. The late Justice Antonin Scalia and Ginsburg were an unusual pair — he a gregarious conservative, she a soft-spoken, self-described “flaming feminist litigator” — but they bonded over their love of the opera.

Scalia considered Ginsburg the Thurgood Marshall of women’s rights, a reference to the legendary civil rights lawyer who helped end racial segregation before becoming the nation’s first African American Supreme Court justice.

Similarly, Ginsburg spent the early part of her career as a legal pioneer in her own right, embarking on a ground-shifting legal crusade in the 1970s for gender equality under the law as an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union that included successfully arguing several cases before the Supreme Court.

At the tail end of her career, the octogenarian Ginsburg became a pop culture sensation. She captivated millennials, who affectionately dubbed her the “Notorious R.B.G,” a nickname inspired loosely by the late rapper Notorious B.I.G.

Ginsburg was the subject of a documentary, a feature film starring actor Felicity Jones, memes, merchandise and several books, including one on her exercise routine at age 85: pushups, planks and squats.

At speaking engagements, Ginsburg was often asked how she balanced her judicial career with her family. That was when she spoke fondly about her husband.

“He’s the only boy I’ve ever known who cared I had a brain,” she said while speaking at Georgetown Law in 2018.

Her husband, the late Marty Ginsburg, died from cancer in 2010.


We will miss her. Discuss. This is also an open thread for this pivotal evening regarding the election 2020 campaign season. What will McConnell and Trump do?

9/11 Open Thread & News Roundup

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Interesting that on 9/11, Bernie Sanders will be the guest on Firing Line.

More tweets, news, videos in the comments. This serves as an open thread.

9/8 Happy Birthday Senator Sanders and OT

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It’s also Star Trek Day:

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Update from Bernie’s Birthday Bash on TYT:

9/5-6 Weekend News Roundup & OT

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Bernie or bust: a centrist Democrat is still as bad as Trump for some on left

“I’m not banning fracking. No matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me,” the Democratic presidential nominee said at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where much of the nearby industry relies on the controversial technique for extracting natural gas.

Could western Pennsylvania win Trump a second term?
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It was a move meant to clarify his position and extend an olive branch to workers who rely on the fossil fuel industry after he reiterated his commitment to combating climate change in recent weeks.

But for a different section of voters, it was another nail in the coffin.

“I don’t want to vote for Joe Biden and I don’t want to vote for Trump,” said Jason Kishineff, who is running for city council in American Canyon, California. “I think either choice is going to lead to human extinction.”

Kishineff is part of a progressive, far-left group of voters who say they will not vote for Biden, even if it means a Trump victory, largely because of the candidate’s failure to adopt a progressive agenda on healthcare, mass incarceration, the environment and policing.

In 2016, this group was part of the estimated 5 million Americans who voted for third-party candidates, including hundreds of thousands of voters in swing states like Florida and Michigan.

But two months ahead of the presidential election – and after fours years of Trump – experts say the group is less of a factor for Democrats than it was in 2016. That shrinking power could serve either to further alienate progressive voters, or coax them into an eventual vote for Biden, especially if he chooses to adopt more leftist policies.

“That group is smaller,” said Rashawn Ray, a political sociologist and fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There have been deliberate decisions made with people saying ‘we cannot make this mistake’ again, knowing they played a role – even if it’s a small role – in Trump getting elected.”

Nick Cruse, a 29-year-old in Kansas City, Missouri, said it wasn’t that simple for him. “There’s no one who has done more damage to the Black community in the last 40 years than Biden,” he said.

Cruse, who is Black, cited Biden’s authorship of the 1994 crime bill, which contributed to mass incarceration rates, and his 2005 bankruptcy bill, which made it more difficult for people with limited income to pay off their debts. While Cruse is staunchly against Trump and the Republican party, he said Biden represents many of the same ideals as the current president when it comes to corporate politics.

Angelica Whipple agreed that avoiding a Trump re-election was not enough reason to vote for Biden.

The 29-year-old moved from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts as a child and has been a resident there since. A few years ago she left her job of 11 years as a personal care assistant for the elderly because of a disability. But trying to get disability benefits was difficult, she said, and she went months without health insurance, delaying surgery for ovarian cysts in the interim.

Whipple had voted for Barack Obama in previous elections but said that her political views changed in 2016, when Sanders ran for president. The Medicare for All platform, and legalization of marijuana, became non-negotiable to her. Biden has not committed to either of those policies, though he supports a public option health plan.

“He’s very steadfast in not doing anything for progressives,” Whipple said. “I don’t see how he’s that much better than Trump. At least with Trump we see it out front.”

Both Cruse and Whipple said that Biden’s vice-presidential pick, Kamala Harris, was another drawback for progressives, mostly due to her past role as a prosecutor. That has become an even more pointed issue during the past months of police brutality protests, since neither Biden nor Harris has explicitly condemned far-right agitators, or committed to defunding police departments.

“He’s been doing all of these horrendously centrist things and surrendering to the Republican narrative of protesters being rioters,” said Matt Myers, a software engineer in Seattle. “Making the false equivalence … it’s just not acceptable. He’s basically kicking the left in the teeth.”

Even so, several of the progressive voters said they would consider voting for Biden if he were to adopt some of their key platforms, such as Medicare for All, which has widespread support among Democrats. So far, they said, that hasn’t come to fruition. “If Biden is willing to support [those policies] I will sacrifice my own integrity and vote for him,” Kishineff said.

Cruse also said he would vote for Biden if he were to adopt Medicare for All and legalization of marijuana. But, he said, that would still be a “huge compromise”. And Jessica, a voter in Texas that the Guardian spoke to earlier this year said she still plans to vote for the Green party.

Myers is hoping Biden will also reform student debt, which left him bankrupt after he went to college for the first time. While he is already planning to vote for Biden, he continues to be a vocal critic to help try to push the platform left, which he said is not only ideological but a better strategy for Democrats.

“I kind of feel that the Democrats have been throwing easy elections because they keep running boring centrists who don’t excite anyone,” he said. “But my bigger fear is that Biden is going to represent four more years of a weak and useless Democrat party that … just sets up the conditions for someone worse than Trump.”

What’s up in your neck of the woods/prairies?

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8/16 Sanders to be Guest On Sunday Bobblehead Shows; News & OT

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Can Biden win over the young Latinos who flocked to Bernie Sanders?

Energized by universal healthcare and free college tuition, enthusiastic young Latinos favored ‘Tio Bernie’ – and Biden has work to do to convince this crucial voting bloc

Thomas Kennedy remembers spending all day on the phone keeping up with excited new voters wanting to know how “el caucus” worked, ahead of the first Democratic primary contest in Iowa in February.

The most noticeable callers were highly motivated young mothers, part of a huge wave of Hispanic voters, activists and volunteers inspired to get involved in politics for the first time by passion for their candidate.

That candidate was Bernie Sanders. Kennedy, a progressive activist and former Sanders operative, has switched to support Joe Biden, who will next week become the Democratic nominee for president, but worries whether Biden can win over valuable young progressives underwhelmed by his moderate politics.

“Bernie talked directly to people’s material needs,” said Kennedy. The clear populist promises of universal healthcare and cancelling student debt in particular caught fire, Kennedy said.

And expansive outreach and slogans like ‘¡Nuestro Futuro, Nuestra Lucha!’ — Our Future, Our Struggle – clicked with the cohort who nicknamed Sanders “Tío Bernie” (Uncle Bernie).

For the first time, Latinos are poised to be the nation’s largest non-white ethnic voting bloc in the 2020 election, with a large young cohort among the estimated 32 million eligible to vote – a record.

Democrats know that their support is crucial to winning the White House – and potentially both chambers of Congress – but concerns remain over whether Biden can not only persuade young progressives who were energized by Sanders, but mobilize Latinos in decisive numbers at a moment when the coronavirus and economic crises are disproportionately hurting communities of color.

“The Biden campaign must reach young people,” María Teresa Kumar, the president of Voto Latino, a political organization focused on voter engagement. “Because if you’re not reaching young people, you are not reaching the Latino community.”

A survey published last month by Voto Latino and pollster Latino Decisions found that only 60% of Latino voters in six battleground states say they definitely plan to vote, and fewer than half say they are “extremely motivated and enthusiastic” about doing so.

Though the poll was conducted before many of Trump’s recent comments on immigration and the coronavirus, it found enthusiasm for Biden waning, particularly among young Latinos. His support among Latino voters slipped to 60% from 67% in February. By comparison, 73% of Latino voters supported Hillary Clinton at this point in 2016.

“When I worked for Bernie, it wasn’t about electing one person. It was about a movement,” Belén Sisa, a former Sanders press secretary, said. “I don’t feel that from Joe Biden.”

Since the primary, Biden has appeared to move to the left on key policies important to young Latinos. He has embraced a $2tn climate plan, though not the Green New Deal, and pledged an ambitious overhaul of Trump’s immigration orders, and an economic agenda centered on racial equality.

“We’ve moved the needle a bit,” Sisa said.

But, like many progressives, she is frustrated by Biden’s reluctance to embrace Medicare for All, the universal healthcare policy that she says would reduce health disparities for Latinos, who are among the country’s most uninsured. And he has refused to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the agency carrying out hardline Trump anti-immigration policies at the US-Mexico border and in raids in US cities.

Sisa also said Sanders’ campaign invested more, much earlier, to cultivate Latino voters.

Chuck Rocha, the architect of Sanders’ ambitious Latino outreach strategy, is now applying some of the tactics used to win Hispanics voters in primary contests from Iowa to California, to help Biden beat Trump in November.

After Biden won the primary, Rocha founded Nuestro Pac, a Democratic Super Pac that will target Latino voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

“Part of our work is spreading the message that Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden agree 75% to 80% of the time,” Rocha said.

The Biden campaign recently made other high-profile hires including Julie Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of civil rights hero Cesar Chavez, and Matt Barreto, the founder of Latino Decisions, a top Democratic polling firm. The campaign has also hired Republican strategist Ana Navarro.

Biden’s platform aimed at Hispanic voters – “Todos con Biden” – focuses on healthcare, education and reversing Trump’s anti-immigration agenda. Biden has promised to reinstate the Daca program of rights and protections for undocumented young people, and send a bill to Congress “on day one” that would create a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US.

He has also pledged a 100-day moratorium on deportations.

During the primary campaign, Biden was repeatedly confronted by immigration activists who demanded contrition for the more than 3 million deportations carried out while he was vice-president.

“You should vote for Trump,” Biden told one critic. Weeks later, he was obliged to apologize for the “pain” caused by the policies.

Earlier this week, prominent Latino politicians, activists and organizations applauded the selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate. Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, represents California, which has the largest population of Hispanic voters in the nation.

Domingo Garcia, president of Lulac, the oldest Hispanic organization in the US, said: “She [Harris] knows what Dreamers are facing, the impact Covid-19 is having on black and brown communities, and the contributions immigrants are making to the economy of the United States.”

More news, tweets, videos, etc in the comments. This serves as an open thread.

7/28 DNC Votes Down MFA; News Roundup & OT

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‘History Will Not Judge This Kindly’: DNC Platform Committee Votes Down Medicare for All Amendment

The DNC Platform Committee rejected the Medicare for All amendment introduced by longtime single-payer advocate Michael Lighty by a vote of 36-125 during a virtual meeting Monday. The committee also voted down separate attempts to include support for expanding Medicare to children, dropping the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 55, and legalizing marijuana.

“Shameful. And during a pandemic,” tweeted progressive radio host Kyle Kulinksi in response to the defeat of the Medicare for All amendment. “History will not judge this kindly. It’s like opposing the New Deal during the Great Depression. Unforgivable.”

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7/24 TGIF News Roundup & OT

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Rep. Ilhan Omar, Sen. Bernie Sanders Unveil Bill To Strip Fossil Fuel Funding

“It’s past time we end the billions of taxpayer subsidies to fossil-fuel companies,” Omar said in a statement. “Our focus right now needs to be on getting the American people through this difficult, unprecedented time, not providing giveaways to polluters.”
The bill, dubbed the End Polluter Welfare Act of 2020, is unlikely to gain much traction in Congress, where the House is controlled by business-friendly Democrats and Republicans hold the Senate. Even if it passed against all odds, President Donald Trump, a fossil fuel hard-liner, would almost certainly veto it.

But the legislation ― co-authored in the House by Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-Calif.) and by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) ― collates the federal fossil fuel support in one place, painting a target on the sources of funding for future legislative efforts.
The bill also calls for a halt to research spending on fossil fuels and financing for new projects overseas. The authors estimate the legislation would save $150 billion over the next decade, money it would earmark for subsidizing poor Americans’ utility bills and guaranteeing the Black Lung Disability Fund for coal miners.

“At a time when we are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and an economic decline, it is absurd to provide billions of taxpayer subsidies that pad fossil-fuel companies’ already-enormous profits,” Sanders said in an emailed statement. “Big Oil made more than $2 trillion in profits over the last two decades. We need more safe, healthy, good paying jobs — not more corporate polluter giveaways.”

More news, tweets, videos, etc in the comments. TGIF! Bar is open, bring a mask.