Blue America Endorses Atlanta "Good Trouble" Activist Nikema Williams

Georgia's 5th congressional district-- most of Atlanta from the airport to Buckhead as well as Decatur plus Forest Park, Lake City and Morrow in Clayton County-- hasn't been in play since 1986, the legendary John Lewis' first term. In fact, Republicans have never run a serious campaign in the D+34 district and Lewis usually ran unopposed. This cycle, Trump pardoned a crackpot right-wing sociopath and felon, Angela Stanton-King, who had served almost 3 years of her prison sentence for running a car theft ring, a kind of female, later-day Darrell Issa. Two weeks after Trump pardoned her, she announced she was running against John Lewis, a beloved congressman by everyone except Trump, who hated him with the passion of the KKK thug that he's always been at heart.

After Lewis died, the Democrats nominated state Senator Nikema Williams to run for his seat. Williams, who is also the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, was diagnosed with COVID-19 in March, Republican state Senator and anti-masker Brandon Beach having infected several members of the legislature. She has since fully recovered and her backing for Medicare for All has grown even stronger as the result of her experience. In 2018, she was arrested at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the state Capitol, demanding that all absentee ballots be counted in the gubernatorial election, which was opposed by the Republicans.

Endorsed this week by Blue America, I asked Nikema to introduce herself to DWT readers. Please consider contributing to her campaign if you like what she has to say-- and if you would like to see more activists in Congress. Just click on the ActBlue 2020 congressional thermometer below.

An Activist For Congress
-by state Sen. Nikema Williams

This election will determine the course of our nation for generations to come. This will be a decisive moment, and we must raise our voices and declare that enough is enough. Enough of Trump’s divisive rhetoric. Enough bigotry and fear mongering. Enough racist and misogynistic politics. We must come together and elect individuals who will stand on the side of the American people. We must elect individuals who will not be afraid to fight for those too often unheard and unseen in our society.

The stakes are high and GA-05 deserves a representative who will put themselves on the line, in the same way Congressman Lewis taught us. Someone who will live up to the legacy of Good Trouble while moving us closer to the full promise of America for generations to come. Someone who will fearlessly center those most marginalized in every decision. Someone willing to live out loud and on purpose fighting for the promise of America.

That someone is me, Nikema Williams, the Democratic Nominee for Georgia’s 5th congressional district.

My fight began in rural Alabama, where I rode around on the back of my grandpa’s pickup truck and dropped off slate cards so our neighbors knew who to vote for. Little did I know, the impact this would have on me, instilling the importance of voting. I grew up reading textbooks that spoke about my great-aunt, Autherine Lucy as she became the first Black student admitted to the University of Alabama and this ingrained into me a sense of standing up to injustice and demanding equal and fair treatment.

I’ve worked since I was 16 years old and needed a work permit. My first job was a union job. I was a proud member of UFCW as I worked as a cashier at Food World. Through the combination of scholarships and Pell grants, I attended Talladega College, an HBCU in Alabama, where I also joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, sorority.

I have a first-hand understanding of the struggles American families face and this is what makes me most equipped to be the voice of GA-05 in Congress.

I know what it's like to have my vote suppressed-- in the last election, I never received my absentee ballot. So I waited in line for five hours just to cast my vote.

I learned the hard way that in America, health care is not a human right. When my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 46, she couldn’t afford the treatments. My sister and I took turns covering the costs of appointments just to keep her alive.

And as the mother of a 5-year-old who just started virtual kindergarten, I understand the importance of affordable high-quality child care and a public school education.

In short, I am not your conventional candidate-- I didn’t come from money or political connections. I am someone who will work around the clock to ensure Georgians are able to thrive regardless of their zip code.

I first ran for office in 2017 because I understood the power of representation, and I was determined to be a voice at the state Senate who would fight for the issues that mattered most to the district. While at the state Senate I led the charge to fully and equitably fund our public schools, expand access to qualify affordable healthcare, and combat the voter suppression that was engineered to keep our communities away from the ballot box.

On November 13, 2018 the lessons of getting into "Good Trouble" became more real than ever. I was standing with my constituents speaking out and demanding that every vote be counted after the disastrous 2018 election, when state troopers rushed protesters into the Capitol, and arrested several of us demonstrating. I was taken out of the state capitol where I serve as a senator, with zip ties on my wrists, to the Fulton County jail, for simply standing with my constituents demanding that every vote be counted in the wake of a disastrous election.

It is moments like these that remind us of how much work we have yet to do. I am ready to get to Congress so I can take my lived experiences with me and fight for an America that allows everyone to thrive, not merely survive. An America that finally lives up to its promise, for everyone.

3 Governors Who Want To Kill Their Own Citizens

There are three governors who have been judged so dangerously incompetent that none can be singled out as the worst pandemic governor in America and all three share the spot: Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Brian Kemp of Georgia. Because all have opposed sane social distancing policies, thousands of their states' citizens have been infected. California now has 865 confirmed COVID-19 cases per one million in the population. South Dakota-- compliments of Noem-- has 2,031 cases per million (up from 1,950 yesterday). Florida has 1,335 cases/million (up from 1,314 yesterday) and Georgia has 1,931 cases per million (up from 1,884). The governors of these three states have implemented policies that will absolutely steepen the curve instead of flatten it. It's as if Noem, DeSantis and Kemp were all homicidal maniacs intent on causing their own populations to become infected.

As Georgia hurtles towards the 20,000 cases mark-- another 482 confirmed infections and 24 more deaths yesterday-- Kemp has decided to re-open restaurants, movie theaters, hair salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors and gyms as well as other businesses in his state. He's using Georgians as an experiment in curve-steepening (and as a test of Darwin's "survival of the fittest" law).




Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told ABC News that she's "extremely concerned about the announcement the governor made. I hope that he's right and I'm wrong because if he's wrong then more people will die." Watch her short interview above with CNN's Chris Cuomo yesterday. Cuomo mentioned that the curve seems to be starting to flatten in Atlanta. She noted that "If we're in a better position, it's because we have been aggressive in asking people to stay home... As I look at the data and as I talk with our public health officials, I don't see that it's based on anything logical."

Even the crazy right-wing senator next door, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), is hissing that Kemp is opening up too much and too soon, worried that the contagion from Georgia will engulf his ownstate.

Nabilah Islam, the hands down best of the dozen candidates running for the open 7th congressional district seat in the suburbs north of Atlanta, wasn't exactly thrilled with Kemp's latest stunt. "For someone who claims to be pro-life," she told me last night, "Kemp's decision to begin to reopening Georgia after only recently finding out that asymptomatic people can spread the novel Coronavirus is anything but. Governor Kemp was one of the last to issue a shelter in place and is one of the first to open. To no one's surprise, the businesses he's choosing to open first are traditionally minority-owned businesses-- barbershops, nail salons being predominantly owned by populations of the electorate that voted against him in 2018. He has no desire to protect lives. His only desire is profit as with the rest of the Republican Party. Putting people first is not on their list of prerogatives."

Fiends of mine in Texas have asked me not to leave out their state, where the Governor is a complete dolt. True, but the Lt. Governor, Dan Patrick, has more power and is an even bigger dolt. He was on Fox's Tucker Carlson Tonight Monday babbling away like an imbecile that "there are more important things than living." Money.





In at least one state, though, an increase in infections can't be blamed on the governor. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, though hampered by a legislature firmly controlled by the Republican Party Death Cult, moved to flatten the curve with regulations and tried to prevent in-person voting. The legislature took the case in favor of infecting the citizens of the state to the state and national Supreme Court-- each controlled by the Republican Party Death Cult-- and each court, by narrow party-line votes, ruled in favor of the pandemic.

The April 7 primary was on a day when infections were dropping because of social distancing policies (138 new cases that day, down from 173 new cases the day before). The governor's executive order helped bring the rate of infection down to just 87 new cases on April 12. A week after the forced in-person election, the infection rate began spiking-- back up to 166 per day. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Milwaukee Health Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik has said that so far 7 new cases in the city have been traced to the forced election-- six voters and one poll worker.

"As you recall, there were people that were in line for a very long time to get their vote in, so if you figure out around a range of time when someone was there or in the polling sites or in the line, connect to someone who was an actual case, that's when we would do notifications," she said.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said about 3,500 voters came to each of the city's five voting sites and dozens of workers were there as well.

"This will tell you why we were so adamant about trying to not have this occur," he said, referring calls to cancel in-person voting.

Yesterday, the Washington Post released a new poll it did in conjunction with the University of Maryland. Scott Clement and Dan Balz reported that the poll shows governors winning "praise across the political spectrum for their leadership, which has sometimes put them sharply at odds with Trump and his administration."

I wish it broke that praise down by state. It's hard to imagine that incompetents like Kemp, Noem and DeSantis could be winning much praise for their pandemic skills. This seemed to be borne out by most Americans-- 54%-- giving Señor Trumpanzee negative marks for his handling of the pandemic. By contrast, 72 percent of Americans give positive ratings to the governors of their states for the way they have dealt with the crisis.

Personal health concerns are widespread, with 57 percent saying they are “very” or “somewhat” worried about becoming infected and seriously ill from the coronavirus, including at least 40 percent of people in every major demographic and political group. For those most concerned, the fear was enough to override partisanship when it comes to the safety of public gatherings, particularly for Republicans.

...[I]n contrast with that overt pressure to reopen the country, the poll finds a clear majority of Americans expect social distancing practices will be necessary until at least the beginning of the summer.

Asked when people expect the outbreak to be controlled enough that people can safely attend gatherings of 10 or more people, just 10 percent predict such gatherings would be safe by the end of April or earlier, while another 21 percent expect them to be safe by the end of May. More than twice as many-- 65 percent-- say it may take until June or later for people to safely gather in groups of 10 or more.

Partisans divide on this question, with 77 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying they expect public gatherings will not be safe until June or later, compared with 51 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners who say the same. Yet Republicans split depending on personal health concerns.

Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are less worried about becoming infected and seriously ill from the coronavirus, 60 percent expect public gatherings will be safe by the end of May or earlier. But among Republicans who are at least somewhat concerned about becoming seriously sick, 66 percent say this will take until June, not far from the share of all Democrats who anticipate such a delay.

Americans are also pessimistic about how quickly the economy will recover after the outbreak is under control. A 63 percent majority expect the economy will recover slowly, while 37 percent think it will recover quickly. Trump has predicted a rapid recovery once businesses reopen, and his optimism is shared by 55 percent of Republicans. Most independents and Democrats expect a slow recovery.

In the meantime, Americans are actively taking part in measures meant to stem the spread of the virus. Most-- 65 percent-- report wearing a mask or a face covering when leaving home in the past week. Another 17 percent say they did not leave home at all. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they had worn a mask or not left home at all.

The Republican Party-- even at a grassroots level-- is a death cult and is driven towards steepening the curve. If 82% of Americans say they wear a mask in public or don't leave their houses at all, that still leaves almost 20% of the population willing to risk death, risk infecting their loved ones, risk keeping the pandemic growing. They are a real danger. I was happy this week to see Louisiana psychopath-pastor Tony Spell arrested again. Hopefully this time they'll throw away the key instead of letting him out like they did last time. Unlike earlier reports that said he was arrested for encouraging large gatherings at his church so he could continue to fleece his flock, the money-hungry right-wing pastor was actually arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for attempting to back a bus into a protester.

The South Was Once Solidly Blue-- And Significant Chunks Of It Are Headed In That Direction Again... And Fast

There are 10 congressional seats or parts of congressional seats in the Dallas-Ft Worth Metro, 5 in the San Antonio Metro, 6 in the Austin Metro and 9 in the Houston Metro, although some of these districts are shared between Metro areas. The Atlanta Metro has 6 congressional districts. Phoenix has 7 districts. And Orlando has 6. These are pretty much the fastest-growing metros in the country. Migration is changing the real PVIs of these Sun Belt districts-- and their partisan political orientations-- far more quickly than the glacial Cook Report can keep up with the changes. We'll come back to that in a moment. These are the districts, their current Representatives and the PVIs Cook currently assigns them (Blue colored districts are the most likely to flip in 2020):

Dallas-Ft Worth

• TX-03- Van Taylor (R)- R+11
• TX-05- Lance Gooden (R)- R+16
• TX-06- Ron Wright (R)- R+9
• TX-12- Kay Granger (R)- R+18
• TX-24- Kenny Marchant (R)- R+9
• TX-25 (shared with Austin)- Roger Williams (R)- R+11
• TX-26- Michael Burgess (R)- R+18
• TX-30- Eddie Bernice Johnson (D)- D+29
• TX-32- Colin Allred (D)- R+5
• TX-33- Marc Veasey (D)- D+23

San Antonio

• TX-20- Joaquin Castro (D)- D+10
• TX-21 (shared with Austin)- Chip Roy (R)- R+10
• TX-23- Will Hurd (R)- R+1
• TX-28- Henry Cuellar (D)- D+9
• TX-35 (shared with Austin)- Lloyd Doggett (D)- D+15

Austin

• TX-10- (shared with Houston)- Michael McCaul (R)- R+9
• TX-17- Bill Flores (R)- R+12
• TX-21- (shared with San Antonio)- Chip Roy (R)- R+10
• TX-25- (shared with Dallas-Ft Worth)- Roger Williams (R)- R+11
• TX-31- John Carter- R+10
• TX-35 (shared with San Antonio)- Lloyd Doggett (D)- D+15

Houston

• TX-02- Dan Crenshaw (R)- R+11
• TX-07- Lizzie Fletcher (D)- R+7
• TX-08- Kevin Brady (R)- R+28
• TX-09- Al Green (D)- D+29
• TX-10- (shared with Austin)- Michael McCaul (R)- R+9
• TX-18- Sheila Jackson Lee (D)- D+27
• TX-22- Pete Olson (R)- R+10
• TX-29- Sylvia Garcia (D)- D+19
• TX-36- Brian Babin (R)- R+26

Atlanta

• GA-04- Hank Johnson (D)- D+24
• GA-05- John Lewis (D)- D+34
• GA-06- Lucy McBath (D)- R+8
• GA-07- Rob Woodall (R)- R+9
• GA-11- Barry Loudermilk (R)- R+17
• GA-13- David Scott (D)- D+20

Phoenix

• AZ-01- Tom O'Halleran (D)- R+2
• AZ-03- Raul Grijalva (D)- D+13
• AZ-05- Andy Biggs (R)- R+15
• AZ-06- David Schweikert (R)- R+9
• AZ-07- Ruben Gallego (D)- D+23
• AZ-08- Debbie Lesko (R)- R+13
• AZ-09- Greg Stanton (D)- D+4

Orlando

• FL-06- Michael Waltz (R)- R+7
• FL-07- Stephanie Murphy (D)- even
• FL-09- Darren Soto (D)- D+5
• FL-10- Val Demings (D)- D+11
• FL-11- Daniel Webster (R)- R+15
• FL-15- Ross Spano (R)- R+6

Writing for The Atlantic yesterday, Derek Thompson noted that "Liberals in America have a density problem. Across the country, Democrats dominate in cities, racking up excessive margins in urban cores while narrowly losing in suburban districts and sparser states. Because of their uneven distribution of votes, the party consistently loses federal elections despite winning the popular vote... All over the world, liberal, college-educated voters pack into cities, where they dilute their own voting power through excessive concentration. So just imagine what would happen to the American political picture if more Democrats moved out of their excessively liberal enclaves to redistribute themselves more evenly across the vast expanse of Red America?"

And they are. "The New York City metro area," he continued, "is shrinking by 277 people every day. Other areas bleeding thousands of net movers each year include Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, and Baltimore-- all in states that routinely vote for Democrats by wide margins. These movers are U-Hauling to ruddier states in the South and West. The five fastest-growing metros of the past few years-- Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta, and Orlando, Florida-- are in states won by Trump. The other metro areas with a population of at least 1 million that grew by at least 1.5 percent last year were Las Vegas; Austin, Texas; Orlando, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; San Antonio; Tampa, Florida; and Nashville, Tennessee. All of those metros are in red or purple states."

This drip-drip-drip of young residents trickling down into red-state suburbs is helping to turn southern metros into Democratic strongholds. (Of course, migration isn’t the only factor pushing these metros leftward, but more on that later.) In Texas, Democrats’ advantage in the five counties representing Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin (the “Texas Five” in the graph below) grew from 130,000 in the 2012 presidential election to nearly 800,000 in the 2018 Senate election.

In Arizona, from 2012 to 2016, Democrats narrowed their deficit in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, by 100,000 votes. Two years later, in the 2018 Senate election, the county swung Democratic, with Democrats gaining another 100,000 net votes.

In Georgia, from the 2012 presidential election to the 2018 gubernatorial elections, the four counties constituting most of Atlanta and its suburbs-- Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, and Gwinnett-- increased their Democratic margin by more than 250,000.

What’s remarkable about these changes isn’t just their size, but their resemblance to Trump’s 2016 margins. Trump won Texas in 2016 by 800,000 votes. He won Arizona by 90,000 votes. He won Georgia by 170,000 votes. If these states’ biggest metros continue to move left at the same rate, there is every reason to believe that Texas, Arizona, and Georgia could be toss-ups quite soon.

As noted above, migration isn’t the only reason southern metros might be shifting to the Democratic Party: Young southerners are surely pulling their region left, while older residents could be switching parties in response to Trump. Republicans have likely hurt themselves by moving further to the right to galvanize their white exurban and rural base, even as their support has thinned in the suburbs and among working-class white women.

But domestic migration is key. Just look at Texas. CNN exit polls for the state’s 2018 Senate election showed that Beto O’Rourke was buoyed by recent movers, winning more than 60 percent of those who had moved to Texas within the past 10 years. At current migration rates, the “Texas Five” counties could easily add another 200,000 votes from 2016 to 2020, putting more pressure on Trump’s margin in the state. A September poll conducted by Univision and the University of Houston found the top-six Democratic presidential contenders all leading Trump in Texas.

Outside of national elections, the blue flood of the Sun Belt could have other political implications, such as more showdowns between blue cities and red states. As The Atlantic’s David Graham has argued, North Carolina’s GOP-led general assembly has waged war against liberal cities such as Charlotte-- for instance, by reversing a local ordinance that banned discrimination against LGBTQ people. This sort of state-city showdown could become a regular feature of southern politics. In the past six months, both the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Observer have run features bemoaning the Californication of northern Texas, with the former noting that “conservatives fear these domestic migrants will bring with them a liberal ideology that would disturb the Texas way of living.”

While such confrontations may be inevitable, over time the growth of liberal metros could force the Republican Party, which has lately been living off the fumes of retrograde xenophobia, to compete more aggressively for votes in the New South-- that is, to be a party for moderates, black voters, and immigrants. The political shift could swing the other way too: Democratic transplants to Dallas and Houston could edge right toward Republican territory, won over by their conservative neighbors’ arguments for lower levels of state and local taxation.

Overall, the southern suburbanization of Democratic votes could be a force for good, not only for Democrats but also, perhaps, for the future GOP-- and therefore for the country at large. Without changes to the Electoral College or to the distribution of Democratic votes, the U.S. may be doomed to replay the 2016 election for several more cycles. Coastal liberals will remain justifiably furious that their votes are systematically discounted, while rural conservatives will remain justifiably indignant that the heart of American business and media has flocked to cities that regard the countryside as a xenophobic backwater. The southern blue flood is not a cure-all for this schism. But if more white rural families join liberal transplants and nonwhite families in America’s diverse southern suburbs, Americans might discover, through the sheer fact of neighborly proximity, a less vitriolic and more optimistic political future.

The DCCC Should Make An Effort To Learn How To Flip A Red District Blue By Backing Progressives Instead Of Conservatives-- Even In Georgia

Tuesday was special election day in quite a few districts. Here in L.A., Berniecrat Wendy Carrillo won the Los Angeles assembly district (East L.A., Echo Park, Silver Lake, Highland Park Chinatown, Eagle Rock) that Jimmy Gomez gave up when he was elected to Congress. She beat another good Democratic candidate Luis Lopez 8,81 (52.8%) to 7,868 (47.2%). But the biggest and most newsworthy race was a seat flip in Georgia, a seat-flip that broke the Republicans' supermajority (two-thirds) in the state Senate. After Republican state Senator Hunter Hill resigned to run for governor two Democrats, Jen Jordan and Dr. Jaha Howard led the field and made it into the runoff-- with no Republican. Tuesday Jordan beat him 10,681 votes (64%) to 6,017 (36%) in the wealthy Atlanta area district (the 6th-- Buckhead, Marietta, Smyrna, Vinings and Sandy Springs-- spanning portions of 2 counties, Cobb and Fulton).

The original race included 5 Republicans and 3 Democrats. Jordan ran on a progressive platform of raising the minimum wage, protecting victims of predatory lenders, LGBT equality and health care expansion. She was clearly the progressive in the race, up against a reactionary DCCC-type Democrat, who claimed that the Bible forbids men to educate women and was vehemently against gay equality. He's exactly the kind of crap-Democrat the DCCC is busy recruiting to run for congressional seats-- the kind of crap-Democrat voters across the country are warning the DCCC they will NOT support. The DCCC is, as usual, tone deaf to what's happening in the country and where the energy is. They are completely clueless as they reach out to horrible Blue Dogs in districts just like the 6th-- Blue Dogs like Grtechen Driskell in Michigan, Brad Ashford in Nebraska, Jay Hulings in Texas, Paul Davis in Kansas, Brendan Kelly in Illinois, Roger Huffstetler in Virginia, Anthony Brindisi in New York and Dan McCready in North Carolina, as well as New Dems Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, Dave Min, Hans Keirstead and Harley Rouda in Orange County, CA, Angie Craig in Minnesota and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey. And despite the DCCC's bullshit, money alone isn't the determining factor; Howard raised $317,897.62 to Jordan's $234,650.

The loss of the GOP supermajority means that if Democrats can win the governorship next year, the GOP-controlled legislature will not have enough votes to automatically override vetoes, the way they are doing to North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.

2 Democrats-- one with a Republican message and one real Democrat