Tag Archives: Joe Biden

9/28 A Vote to Save Democracy & OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

 

Last week marked the start of Early Voting in my county. I had applied for a mail-in ballot. Should I wait for the ballot, or maybe just go and see how busy the one polling place open is? Was I ready to make my choice for NOTA or a ticket on the ballot?

All summer I deliberated. I live in a state that will vote blue for the most part. Why should I care now that once again, the DNC handed the nomination on a silver platter to a heavily flawed candidate, this time Joe Biden. Second time in a row. I’m still befuddled how Bernie won the first few states, then lost most of the races after that.

Last Monday, I decided to show some support for a down ballot in my district.  I e-mailed the Dem County party office, and requested a sign.  I got an e-mail saying there was a shortage of signs for a particular candidate (the one running for congress) and would I take another sign instead? They had a dearth of signs until a week ago.

I negotiated instead, making it clear that I live on the edge of a town, and my backyard actually backs up to an avenue where the visibility is good. Moreover, the vote for the person running for the congress seat was crucial to redistricting. I’m glad they didn’t ask if I wanted a Biden Harris sign. Within 2 hours, there was a sign in my yard for Betsy Londrigan. She was not my first choice in the primary, but she almost won last time. The person who wrote me the e-mail took one of the signs from his yard and put it in mine. As it turned out, he was running for an office and was VP of the county party. That indicated to me an “Not me, us” attitude I could get behind.

Clearly, from my numerous criticisms on this site, Biden did not earn my vote, nor did he try to earn other progressives’ votes, other than meeting with them. Like Bernie said recently, if I were young, I’d be very angry.

However, I decided to vote in person last Thursday as I made up my mind to go ahead with the deed.  I did vote for the Democratic Party ticket - from POTUS on down to local races. There was one Republican considered for one of the races, but decided just to vote all Dem.  I was very tempted to vote for the Socialist & Liberation party candidate.

I don't expect many birdies to do what I did, but I think we do need to send a signal to Trump and his gross incompetent buddies that he is getting fired for insubordination and domestic terrorism.

Identity politics for electing the highest officer of the federal branch did weigh in just a bit. While I would have preferred Tammy Baldwin, Barbara Lee or Karen Bass for VP choice, I'm hoping that Harris will help Biden bend a bit more if he has truly evolved since the days of that gosh-awful crime bill of 1994.  I also want all girls to be able to look up to someone like Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants. I am concerned that the donor money has already infiltrated her political psyche, but at this point, she's agreed to what the party wants her to do, which is help get the ship turned around. I do think she will help the ticket, even more than when Geraldine Ferraro did in 1984 when she was nominated.  I was thrilled when Ferraro was nominated, but unfortunately, she had a very weak running mate.   Similar situation here, but to be fair to Mondale, Reagan was an effective spokesperson for the GOP.

I'm also hoping Anita Hill will get a judicial bench out of this, or advise on a good selection to choose from judicial nominees. The problem is the Dem party has given away too many picks already instead of fighting for them now.

Bernie is right in my mind about the threat to democracy. I'm not voting for Biden. I voted to give Democracy an opportunity to breathe and eventually thrive again, and as a Democratic Socialist, I concluded this was the best choice I could make. It's not about me even though it would have been nice if Biden could have tried more to earn my vote.

Bernie held a town hall on FB about rural issues and voters. I'm glad he's still holding town halls, continuing to gather evidence of a progressive agenda.

Democracy is a requisite to every thing we do as Americans; it must win first. It's hard though because we are all exhausted from COVID, forest fires, and tweets. But I'm still DemExit and will criticize the two major parties in order to raise awareness of issues that crumbs aren't enough to fix. We need a transformative government to streamline major resources to prevent the spread of pandemics and to beat back poverty. We pay their salaries and they should be accountable to us.

(photo credit: Benny's Bernie 2020 t-shirt) 

That's my beef for now.  More news, tweets, and videos in the comments.  This serves as an open thread.

 

On the Eve of Mussolini Trump’s Re-nomination Speech

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

A birdie posted recently about the conundrum progressives find themselves in, with a basically a Republican election come November. Ira Allen probably didn’t read the Nest’s responses, but offered this as food for thought at Common Dreams:

Voting for Shitty Biden
If you do decide to vote, it’s important for somebody to acknowledge directly that you don’t have to vote for Joe Biden.

You probably should vote for him at the top of the ticket, but you don’t have to. You’re not a shitty person if you don’t.

Or, at least, you’re no shittier than the millions of people who ensured the Democratic establishment would foist Biden on you by loudly proclaiming #BlueNoMatterWho a year and more in advance of elections.

Remember how it was that you ended up with this terrible option the next time people ask you to give away all of your political leverage in advance.

That said, I’m going to offer some reasons why you should vote for Joe Biden, prefaced by common lies about why Joe Biden is great or at least not shit. For each, I repeat the common lie, explain why it’s a lie, and suggest a reason you should probably vote for Biden anyhow.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll skip over a bunch of ways people talk about Joe Biden that aren’t exactly lies, but are just ugly and gross and complete turn-offs in every way. (Like when they did the quick hypocritical turnabout from believing women in general to adamantly not believing the specific woman who accused Biden of sexual assault, Tara Reade, which made them all sound awfully like Republicans.) I’ll also skip over a bunch of things people get super unhappy about when Republicans do it, but basically refuse to notice when Democrats do it. (Like the fact that the cages Trump put those kids in were built by Obama and Biden.)

Some Lies about Why Biden Is Good

Lie #1: Biden fights for the “little guy” and is a “straight shooter.”

This is an idiotic and obvious lie. Biden fights for big pharma and for the banking industry and for the war manufacturers and for the insurance companies. He fights for the CEOs and the Boards of Directors. And they fight for him. He’s a terrible candidate for the little guy, like nearly everyone in both major parties. He’s not a lesser evil. He’s also a giant liar. Not as big a liar as his opponent, who basically never says anything true except that politicians lie, but still: when you vote Joe, you get lots and lots of malarkey. Voting for Biden is worthwhile because it’s a vote against somebody who’s actively trying to destroy all the good or even semi-okay parts of the government. Including voting itself. And we’ll need those bits to still exist, including voting, if we ever hope to have a real democracy. That’s it. That’s the reason.

Lie #2: Biden is good for Black Americans.

No, he’s not. He’s terrible for Black Americans. He’s spent most of his career locking up Black Americans and lying about being part of the Civil Rights movement. Joe Biden is good at ingratiating himself with a subset of wealthy and politically strong Black Americans, but at the level of both policy and communication style (both past and present) he is just normal American white supremacist bad. His opponent is no better—much uglier in his personal racism, but about equally bad for Black Americans at the level of policy. They’re both worse. Voting for Biden is worthwhile because it’s a vote against somebody who’s actively trying to destroy all the good or even semi-okay parts of the government. Including voting itself.

Lie #3: Biden’s platform is the most progressive in American history.

Not even close. Basically all of the left-wing third-party platforms have been more progressive. Go ahead and start with Eugene Debs. Biden’s might be the most progressive Democratic Party platform ever, but it also might not. If it is, this is also the highest-numbered year in American history. Shouldn’t the platform of the party that supposedly believes in progress by definition be more progressive than ever? More importantly, saying you’ll do nice things doesn’t mean you’ll actually do them—especially when you’ve spent your whole life not doing them and have already begun assuring all of your shitty major donors that you won’t do them. Past behavior is an indicator of future performance. Still, on this one Biden is genuinely better than his opponent, who is incoherent and malicious, and so mostly says he’ll do mean things for no good reason. If there’s enough popular pressure AND widespread disaster, a Biden presidency might end up being very modestly left, but that’s a pretty big “if.” A better bet is that voting for Biden is worthwhile because it’s a vote against somebody who’s actively trying to destroy all the good or even semi-okay parts of the government. Including voting itself.

Lie #4: Biden is mentally fit.

He’s in extremely clear cognitive decline. Democrats should be embarrassed to be running him as a candidate. They’re trying to make you feel bad by lying about it, pretending his obvious mental lapses are a stutter and you’re a jerk for noticing and not understanding it. But watch videos of the guy from when he was pushing with a stutter but also great lucidity the crime bill that has destroyed so many lives since he got it through in 1994 (he was still lying about how great it was in 2016, by the way). Biden’s had a stutter all his life, but the speaker in older videos–all the way up through his time as a vice president–is a highly effective orator. Gaffes, sure, a carefully managed stutter, sure, but not clear cognitive breaks and big confusion like nowadays. In fairness, Joe Biden’s opponent is equally obviously unfit, not only cognitively in decline but seriously deranged. Once more, they’re both worse. Voting for Biden is worthwhile because it’s a vote against somebody who’s actively trying to destroy all the good or even semi-okay parts of the government. Including voting itself.

Lie #5: Biden will “pivot left” in office if we push him.

No, he won’t. They never do. And this one especially not. He’s a cozy, clubby shithead who likes to be comfortable and feel important, and who relies entirely on the ultra-wealthy to make that possible for him. Unless the ultra-wealthy decide a little left pivoting is necessary to save themselves from the guillotine, Joe Biden will stay true to the shitty course he’s followed for many decades. The guy he’s running against is a lot worse still, in terms of I-got-mine-so-fuck-you personal ideology, but electing Biden runs the real risk that all the millions of people who stopped sleepwalking for ten seconds here recently will go right back to sleep once “their” guy is in the White House. So, it’s a wash again who’s worse: they both are. Still, voting for Biden is worthwhile because it’s a vote against somebody who’s actively trying to destroy all the good or even semi-okay parts of the government. Including voting itself.

And so okay, fine, I did lie about the one thing. I said there would be reasons plural. There’s basically just one solid reason to vote for Biden.

Voting for Biden is worthwhile because it’s a vote against somebody who’s actively trying to destroy all the good or even semi-okay parts of the government. Including voting itself. And we’ll need those bits to still exist, including voting, if we ever hope to have a real democracy. That’s it. That’s the reason.

Read the rest here: Voting for Biden Without Lying to Yourself

If there is a reason to vote for Biden, it’s with a slim hope his presidency put forward more liberal judges.

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

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

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.

7/27 Ninety-Nine Days Until the National Election & OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Bernie Sanders delegates mount convention rebellion over Medicare for All

More than 360 delegates, most of whom back Sanders, have signed on to a pledge to vote against the Democratic Party’s platform if it does not include support for “Medicare for All,” the petition’s organizers told POLITICO. They argue that single-payer health care is an urgent priority amid a worldwide pandemic and the biggest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression.

“This pandemic has shown us that our private health insurance system does not work for the American people. Millions of people have lost their jobs and their health care at the same time,” said Judith Whitmer, a Sanders delegate and chair of the convention’s Nevada delegation who helped spearhead the pledge. “There’s people leaving the hospital now with millions of dollars in medical bills. What are we going to do about that?”

The warning is all but certain to set up a clash between Sanders’ most dedicated supporters and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who opposes Medicare for All, at a time when the party is seeking to demonstrate unity ahead of its August convention. Though the petition signers have little chance of revising the platform to include Medicare for All support, they do have the numbers to draw attention to their protest and cause.

It is also likely to trigger fears among Democratic leaders about a repeat of the 2016 convention, when the party’s divides were on public display as Sanders supporters booed the mention of Hillary Clinton.

The left-wing groups Progressive Democrats of America and RootsAction.org are announcing Monday that they support the vow to vote against the platform if it doesn’t include Medicare for All. The Bernie Delegates Network, a coalition made up of hundreds of Sanders delegates, said it will also publicize the petition. Organizers expect those efforts will net hundreds more signatures, including from Biden delegates.

“The sea change that’s underway could swell as a result of this initiative,” said Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org and a Sanders delegate. “It’s a reasonable hope that historians will look back at the next couple of weeks as a time when hundreds of delegates stepped forward and said, ‘This is a red line for a humane society and we’re not going to stop saying so.’”

Biden currently has 2,632 delegates, while Sanders has 1,076, according to POLITICO’s delegate tracker.

Despite their frustration with Biden, progressive leaders behind the pledge all said they are voting for Biden and working to elect him. RootsAction.org, for instance, noted that it is planning to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an effort to persuade swing-state progressives who are on the fence to get behind Biden.

Organizers also said they are not being divisive — rather, it’s the party leaders who are overruling the grassroots who are being divisive, they argued. They point to exit polls showing that majorities of Democratic primary voters across states are in favor of Medicare for All.

“We’re going to fight like hell for Biden. And there’s no contradiction between doing that and supporting this pledge,” Solomon said.

Whitmer said Sanders delegates in Nevada began circulating the pledge on Thursday through Slack and delegate groups. Though she did not provide precise numbers, she said it is safe to say that a majority who signed on are Sanders delegates, though some Biden delegates have as well. Activists hope a significant number of Biden delegates will support the vow.

The announcement of the pledge comes as President Donald Trump is attempting to paint Biden as a “puppet of the radical left.” His campaign has spent at least $14 million on a misleading ad claiming that police would be defunded under a Biden administration. The former vice president came out against defunding police almost as soon as it gained prominence.

Last week, a DNC committee released a draft platform that did not include support for Medicare for All or other top progressive priorities such as a jobs guarantee or the “Green New Deal,” despite Sanders aides’ efforts to include them as planks. Organizers are going public with the Medicare for All pledge now in part because they hope to influence the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee, which is taking up the agenda on Monday. Whitmer said activists successfully persuaded a member of the panel to submit an amendment to back single-payer.

The pledge by delegates to vote against a platform without Medicare for All represents something of a split over strategy between Sanders and his most passionate supporters. After moderates accused him of failing to do everything he could to persuade his supporters to back Clinton in 2016 — a charge he vehemently denied — the Vermont senator has taken multiple steps to bring the Democratic Party together this cycle.

Sanders set up “unity” task forces with Biden, which released recommendations earlier this month. Progressives successfully pushed Biden’s allies to move left on certain issues, such as climate change, immigration and a no-deductible public option for health care. But they failed to persuade moderates on the task forces to back legalizing marijuana, end “qualified immunity,” or embrace single-payer.

Sanders aides again tried to push centrists on the DNC’s draft committee to get behind Medicare for All, but failed to do so. However, they did manage to insert a nod to single-payer in the platform.

“Generations of Democrats have been united in the fight for universal health care. We are proud our party welcomes advocates who want to build on and strengthen the Affordable Care Act and those who support a Medicare for All approach; all are critical to ensuring that health care is a human right,” the draft states.

But some progressive activists were unimpressed, pointing to the more than 5 million people that liberal advocacy group Families USA said have lost their health insurance between February and May because of the coronavirus.

“Democrats who understand the profound need for Medicare for All don’t want a pat on the head,” Solomon said. “We want a genuine political commitment to health care as a human right. Biden hasn’t gotten there.”

More news, tweets, videos, analysis in the comments section!

7/11 Weekend News Round-up & OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Should Biden consider spending big in Deep Red States Like GA, OH, & TX?

Jonathan Martin at the NYT writes:

In a series of phone calls, Democratic lawmakers and party officials have lobbied Mr. Biden and his top aides to seize what they believe could be a singular opportunity not only to defeat Mr. Trump but to rout him and discredit what they believe is his dangerous style of racial demagogy.

This election, the officials argue, offers the provocative possibility of a new path to the presidency through fast-changing states like Georgia and Texas, and a chance to install a generation of lawmakers who can cement Democratic control of Congress and help redraw legislative maps following this year’s census.

Mr. Biden’s campaign, though, is so far hewing to a more conservative path. It is focused mostly on a handful of traditional battlegrounds, where it is only now scaling up and naming top aides despite having claimed the nomination in April.

At the moment, Mr. Biden is airing TV ads in just six states, all of which Mr. Trump won four years ago: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. The campaign included perennially close Florida only after some deliberations about whether it was worth the hefty price tag, and when Mr. Trump’s struggles with older populations made it clearly competitive, according to Democrats familiar with their discussions.

The campaign’s reluctance to pursue a more expansive strategy owes in part to the calendar: Mr. Biden’s aides want to see where the race stands closer to November before they broaden their focus and commit to multimillion-dollar investments, aware that no swing states, let alone Republican-leaning states, have actually been locked up.

I think Mr. Biden’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon should be well advised her client is not Barack Obama for re-election. But yet, these centrists persist:

“Trump’s abominable presidency, especially in the context of the total failure to confront coronavirus, makes Texas very winnable,” said Representative Filemon Vela, an early Biden supporter. He said he is “getting bombarded” with pleas from Texas Democrats who are similarly convinced the state could turn blue with a substantial commitment.”

Mr. Vela, who represents a long stretch of South Texas, said he had repeatedly made his case in recent weeks with Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon. He argued that the former vice president’s strength with Black voters and suburbanites, and his ability to shave the party’s rural losses, gave him the party’s best chance in decades to claim the state’s 38 electoral votes.

Yes, Trump hit and ran, got caught this time with a pandemic, which finally unveiled more layers of racism, and gross incompetence. Personally, I think Biden’s consultant class really needs to focus on the VP, the platform, and strategies for dealing with a deep recession if he wins. I would not worry about ad buys. The networks are going to have to cut their prices as it is.

Moreover, Biden appears fragile to those who don’t know him very well, especially younger voters. Trump is an old man too, with gaffes. But it would not take very many gaffes for Biden to make on TV or in speeches online to deter some voters into staying with the devil they know or not vote at all in those red states.

The Clinton camp was overconfident in steering resources away from WI, MI, and PA by going to AZ in 2016. Going to AZ may make sense this cycle, but OH? Only if Biden picked Nina Turner to run with him. Otherwise, let’s hope history with the DNC consultant class doesn’t repeat the mistakes of 2016. Although they are bound to, just listening to the dull platform from 2012 2016 being proposed for 2020.

What’s going on your neck of the beach, woods, desert, or prairie? or urban areas?

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

7/10 News Roundup and OT: Bar is Open

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Has Biden Really Embraced the Left?

Dave Weigel at WaPo writes:

The last time Joe Biden appeared on a presidential ticket, the Democratic Party’s platform contained no mention of marijuana. Its health-care language focused on the Affordable Care Act, suggesting that the fight for universal coverage was pretty much won. It promised to “fight inequalities in our criminal justice system,” without spelling out how, and urged that when the death penalty is used, it should “not be arbitrary.”

Biden is happily inheriting a party that has moved to the left, without interruption, since he left the vice presidency. The report this week from his Unity Task Force, the product of a deal between the nominee and primary runner-up Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), found Biden’s team inching a little further in that direction — cautious, careful with its wording, but dramatically different from the politics that defined much of Biden’s career.

“I think the compromise that they came up with, if implemented, will make Biden the most progressive president since FDR,” Sanders said in a Wednesday night interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

Republicans quickly repurposed Sanders’s answer to describe Biden as a catspaw for the country’s resurgent socialist movements. “This is surrendering to the socialists,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a Thursday interview on Fox News. The Republican National Committee highlighted sentences taken directly from some of Sanders’s campaign white papers to accuse Biden of “plagiarism,” a charge that evoked his botched 1988 presidential campaign, if not quite describing a task force designed to merge platforms.

But the basic Republican critique was right. Biden, seen by voters as the most moderate of their two dozen or so options in the primary, has welcomed a shift away from the careful politics Democrats deployed, for decades, to mollify suburban voters. Under his proposals, millions of voters are offered a new government health-care plan, and millions more are offered federal housing and housing assistance. Tax cuts, emphasized for years to convince swing voters, aren’t prioritized.

“In 2008, one of the things we had to constantly fight in places like the I-4 corridor was taxes,” said Steve Schale, an Obama-Biden campaign veteran who’s now a strategist for the pro-Biden super PAC Unite the Country, referring to a vote-rich stretch of Florida cities and suburbs. “I bet you we ran more ads about Barack Obama cutting middle-class taxes than anything. We had to win that fight. Our ad strategy was built around keeping that fight neutral.”

Tough-on-crime politicking has been de-emphasized, too. The party’s 2012 platform did not mention the “war on drugs.” The 2016 platform, reshaped by Sanders delegates, condemned the drug war for the “imprisonment of millions of Americans, disproportionately people of color.” The task force’s paper, with Biden’s name at the top, pledges to “end the failed ‘War on Drugs’ ” entirely.

Weigel is right about FNC though. They are crafting the narrative reporting that AOC and Bernie, the socialists, are taking over Democratic Establishment, and it is showing up in other Red State.com outlets. I guess the new norm is the “Progressive Establishment.” I wish that were true. I’m not fooled by any of this and neither are most progressives.

More news, tweets, videos in the comments. TGIF….

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5/8-9 TGIF – Sanders on All In; Saturday Open Thread (Updates)

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Just saw this announcement:

Update: here’s the video clip.

The IL governor is pushing for the IL Leg to pass a vote by mail for the GE.

Benny’s Bar is open and you are also welcome to add jukebox YT’s for merriment in the comments. See you there!

May 4 Kent State and OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/04/kent-state-massacre-marked-start-of-americas-polarization

i’m not sure how the news came in that day, probably on the radio since my new husband and I didn’t have a TV. I turned 20 in Houston, he at 27 in April. we had both marched against the war, but this was a new realization, a shock to so many.

<blockquote>To Lou Capecci, the crack of the national guard’s guns sounded like more of the same.

“It was pretty common to have demonstrations every day. The national guard had been on campus for a few days. They would shoot tear gas into the middle of the crowd and people would throw it back at them. Then we heard the shots and at first everybody kind of shrugged their shoulders and thought more tear gas,” he said.

But the young student at Kent State University in Ohio was mistaken.

Fifty years ago today, 28 soldiers opened fire on anti-Vietnam war demonstrators, letting loose 67 bullets in just 13 seconds. Four students were killed, nine wounded, and a fissure exposed in American society that shaped politics into the Trump era.

To large parts of the country, the Kent State massacre was a shocking and seminal event – American soldiers gunning down white students was unthinkable until it happened.

Part of the shock for Capecci, who walked away from the demonstration minutes before the national guard fired, was that he thought the soldiers’ weapons were just for show.

“No one knew the national guard had real bullets. We were completely shocked. It just never occurred to anyone that they would actually have bullets to shoot people. It may sound naive but we talked about that for years afterwards,” he said.

It was naive. In other parts of the country, the police were killing African Americans protesting for equal rights, including on college campuses before and immediately after Kent State with little attention from the television cameras that gave saturation coverage to the deaths of the white students.</blockquote>

Read more at the link.