Who's Going To Win Tomorrow?

Last week, Danny Goldberg-- author, former chairman of Warner Bros Records, former manager of Nirvana-- penned an article for The Nation, In California Before the Democratic Primary, 'Nobody Knows Anything'. He was talking about Hollywood and the Biz. "Political Hollywood," he wrote, "reflects a national divide among Democrats that is as much generational as it is ideological. The son of a prominent TV show runner recently sent a widely circulated e-mail to his “moderate” parents explaining why he and his friends are campaigning for Sanders-- whose celebrity supporters include Cardi B, John Cusack, Ariana Grande, Emily Ratajkowski, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Tim Robbins, Steve Skrovan, The Strokes, and Vampire Weekend. On the Sunday before the primary, Sanders is appearing at the Los Angeles Convention Center with Public Enemy, Sarah Silverman, and Dick Van Dyke... The Vermont senator’s lead in California polls is causing angst among many more traditional Democrats, some who believe the debatable theory that Sanders was partially responsible for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, and many who are worried about his electability."

On Saturday, Status Quo Joe won among elderly, conservative rural African-Americans. But Bernie is leading among African American voters nationally. Maddow, who is an excellent reporter on PutinGate and knows absolutely nothing at all-- and never had-- about American electoral politics, announced on Saturday that "If anybody knows anything about winning the Democratic nomination and about what it takes for a Democratic nominee to win a general election, it is black voters. And if Sen. Sanders continues to underperform systematically with black voters, and if we see him get shellacked-- not just beaten but shellacked tonight in South Carolina-- because of his performance with black voters, that’s an existential question about that nomination." Do you still watch her show? I turn MSNBC off as soon as Chris Hayes is finished. Three of The Intercept sharpest reporters, Nausicaa Renner, Aída Chávez and Akela Lacy burst Maddow's balloon, noting that "Last week, the Reuters-Ipsos poll found Sanders besting Biden by three points nationally among black voters-- certainly a relevant data point when considering whether Sanders can win among black voters... the Hill/HarrisX poll had Sanders up nine. A Morning Consult survey recently found Sanders beating Biden by five among all black primary voters, and thumping him by a 3-1 margin among black voters under 45. In other words, the national picture does not exactly portend a shellacking among black voters-- important context that was kept from MSNBC viewers, who would be left to conclude that the same minority-voter problem that hobbled Sanders’s campaign in 2016 remains a major obstacle. It simply isn’t true."

A handful of commentators, including former Sen. Claire McCaskill, a vituperative opponent of Sanders, acknowledged that South Carolina’s results may not necessarily translate into victory for Biden nationwide. “Unfortunately,” said McCaskill on MSNBC, “there aren’t a lot of Jim Clyburns.” Clyburn, an iconic civil rights leader and the uncontested party leader in South Carolina, as well as the number three Democrat in the House, endorsed Biden last week, giving his campaign the kind of boost that can’t be replicated elsewhere. (McCaskill now works for a dark-money group with links to a project opposing Medicare for All, a major plank of Sanders’s campaign.)

There are other reasons to suspect that Biden’s campaign won’t be able to sustain its high note after South Carolina. The state is one of the demographically oldest. According to CNN exit polls, six percent of voters were between the ages of 17 and 24, and five percent were between the ages of 25 and 29. Around 28 percent of voters in South Carolina were under age 45, compared to 45 percent in Iowa, 35 percent in New Hampshire, and 36 percent in Nevada.

What’s more, Biden spent an enormous proportion of his resources in South Carolina, which he hasn’t done in Super Tuesday states or beyond, and is running low on cash.

...While MSNBC more or less omitted the forward-looking picture of the race, Fox News was more sanguine about Biden’s chances. Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George W. Bush, played down what the win could mean for Biden in other states. Only one of the 14 races Biden will compete in on Super Tuesday have a demography similar to South Carolina: Alabama. “If he cannot win anywhere without huge numbers of African American votes, the upcoming battlefield is not favorable to him still,” Fleischer said.

So back to our question, who's going to win tomorrow? I'd bet on Bernie-- big. Let's look at the state polls via RealClearPolitics:

California- 415 delegates

• Bernie- 34.3%
• Elizabeth- 17.3%
• Biden- 13.0%
• Bloomberg- 10.5%
• Mayo Pete- 9.5%
• Klobuchar- 5.3%
• Tulsi- 1.3%

Texas- 228 delegates

• Bernie- 29.7%
• Biden- 20.8%
• Bloomberg- 18.0%
• Elizabeth- 12.7%
• Mayo Pete- 7.5%
• Klobuchar- 3.8%
• Tulsi- 0.7%

North Carolina- 110 delegates

• Biden- 25.6%
• Bernie- 23.4%
• Bloomberg- 16.0%
• Elizabeth- 11.0%
• Mayo Pete- 6.8%
• Klobuchar- 5.0%
• Tulsi- 1.0%

Virginia- 99 delegates

• Bernie- 25.0%
• Bloomberg- 19.5%
• Biden- 18.5%
• Mayo Pete- 11.5%
• Elizabeth- 11.0%
• Klobuchar- 7.0%
• Tulsi- 1.0%

Massachusetts- 91 delegates

• Bernie- 24.7%
• Elizabeth- 20.7%
• Mayo Pete- 13.3%
• Bloomberg- 11.7%
• Biden- 10.7%
• Klobuchar- 6.0%
• Tulsi- 2.0%

Minnesota- 75 delegates

• Klobuchar- 29%
• Bernie- 23%
• Elizabeth- 11%
• Biden- 8%
• Bloomberg- 3%
• Mayo Pete- 3%
• Tulsi- 1%

Colorado- 67 delegates

• Bernie- 30.5%
• Elizabeth- 17.5%
• Mayo Pete- 13.0%
• Bloomberg- 12.5%
• Biden- 10.5%
• Klobuchar- 6.0%
• Tulsi- 1.0%

Oklahoma- 37 delegates

• Biden- 21%
• Bloomberg- 20%
• Bernie- 13%
• Mayo Pete- 10%
• Elizabeth- 9%
• Klobuchar- 7%
• Tulsi- 0%

Arkansas- 31 delegates

• Bloomberg- 20%
• Biden- 19%
• Bernie- 16%
• Mayo Pete- 16%
• Elizabeth- 9%
• Klobuchar- 5%
• Tulsi- 0%

Utah- 29 delegates

• Bernie- 27.5%
• Elizabeth- 14.5%
• Bloomberg- 14.5%
• Mayo Pete- 11.5%
• Biden- 9.0%
• Klobuchar- 3.5%
• Tulsi- 0%

Maine- 24 delegates

• Bernie- 25%
• Mayo Pete- 16%
• Bloomberg- 14%
• Biden- 12%
• Elizabeth- 9%
• Klobuchar- 4%
• Tulsi- 3%

Vermont- 16 delegates

• Bernie- 51%
• Mayo Pete- 13%
• Elizabeth- 9%
• Bloomberg- 7%
• Biden- 5%
• Klobuchar- 4%
• Tulsi- 1%

There is no available public polling for Tennessee (64), Alabama (52), Democrats Abroad (13) and American Samoa (6), though Biden is presumed to be leading significantly in Alabama and very tightly in Tennessee, while Bernie is likely to win in American Samoa and among Americans Abroad. Although Bloomberg spent incredible amounts of money for Super Tuesday, he isn't expected to win any states but will gather delegates in Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. So the money is working to some extent and there are Democrats stupid enough to be brainwashed by advertising.

These are the number of delegates each candidate has won so far, the day before Super Tuesday.

Do Status Quo Joe And Mayo Pete Have Dreams Beyond Their Own Career Trajectories?

I don’t want to imagine what kind of horrible cabinet a conservative like Biden-- or even Mayo Pete-- might select. Both represent the transpartisan status quo establishment and, as Biden, famously assured a roomful of Wall Street banksters as he kicked off his campaign, if he’s elected nothing would fundamentally change. On Thursday, writing for Common Dreams, Norman Solomon warned that neither Biden or Mayo can be trusted.

In a recent New Yorker profile of Pete Buttigieg, one sentence stands out: “Watch Buttigieg long enough and you notice that he uses abstraction as an escape hatch.” Evasive platitudes are also routine for Joe Biden, the other major Democratic presidential candidate running in what mainstream journalists call “the center lane.”

Jim Hightower has observed that “there’s nothing in the middle of the road except yellow lines and dead armadillos.” Or, we might say, party lines and deadening politics.

Like other so-called “moderate” politicians, Buttigieg and Biden dodge key questions by plunging into foggy rhetoric. They’re incapable of giving a coherent and truthful account of power in the United States because they’re beholden to corporate-aligned donors. Those donors want to hear doubletalk that protects their interests, not clear talk that could threaten them.

“Forty billionaires and their spouses have donated to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, according to an analysis of federal election filings, making the South Bend, Indiana mayor a favorite among America’s richest people,” Forbes reported last month.

…Buttigieg is a very new darling of corporate America compared to his main centrist rival. Biden-- who has a decades-long record of scarcely legal corruptio while serving corporate interests in Washington-- is also heavily reliant on wealthy donors and foggy abstractions.

But the basic contradiction-- between serving enemies of working people and claiming to be a champion of working people-- is an increasingly difficult circle to square. And a barrier to credibility with many voters.

...That was a subtext when Biden declared in May 2018: “I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble... The folks at the top aren’t bad guys.” (At last count, 44 billionaires and their spouses have donated to Biden’s campaign.)

Abstractions and evasions of the sort practiced daily by Buttigieg and Biden amount to papering over class conflicts. In sharp contrast, Elizabeth Warren and even more so Bernie Sanders (whom I actively support) are willing to name the names of corporations and billionaires growing even wealthier in ways that undermine the lives of most Americans.

It’s understandable that corporate-backed candidates don’t want to be cornered by questions that touch on realities of political and economic power. They’d much rather take evasive action than be candid. It’s not enticing to name victimizers when they’re funding your campaign.

Imagine who either would pick to be Secretary of the Treasury. In fact, imagine who either would pick to be Secretary of just about everything. Yes… nothing would fundamentally change.

I want to recommend a piece Danny Goldberg wrote for The Nation this week, Madam Secretary, RIP. “in the age of Trump,” he wrote, “middle of the roaders also have elusive dreams, some of which were dramatized for the past six years in the CBS TV series Madam Secretary which aired its series finale on December 8th.”

For the most part, the mainstream press either ignored or condescended to the political drama which starred Tea Leoni as Secretary of State for the first five years. Keith Carradine played the President who appointed her until the show’s final season when his successor, Elizabeth McCord, became America’s first female President. In an affectionate farewell, Margaret Lyons of the New York Times nevertheless referred to Madam Secretary as “the least hip of shows,” and downplayed its political relevance.

Yet the “conservative” website MRC (whose slogan is “Exposing and Combatting Liberal Media Bias” and which Breitbart often links to) published three separate attack pieces about the show in the last few months beginning with the snarky exhortation “Liberals rejoice! Your dream of a Hillary Clinton presidency is finally coming true.”

That right-wing focus may have been as a result of the fact that in the increasingly fragmented video playing field, old school TV networks remain a surprisingly big fragment. At its peak, Madam Secretary was seen by over fourteen million viewers-- more than triple the number who watch the highest-rated cable news programs. A fictional series about Washington is not “news,” but in a culture in which a large percentage of voters make decisions based on emotions, a drama that directly addresses political issues is one part of the mosaic that forms contemporary mythology. Although the show’s creator Barbara Hall told me that she had not kept track of its demographics, she agreed that a large part of Madame Secretary’s audience was the kind of older, educated suburban women who are responsible for Nancy Pelosi being Speaker.

Hall, who previously produced Joan Of Arcadia, based Madam Secretary on the template of The West Wing: intelligent idealistic characters who like to banter (no anti-heroes among them), earnest attempts to present political issues, but with enough humor and family drama added to avoid the feel of a civics lesson. Madam Secretary depicted a Washington in which conservatives and liberals had principled arguments which strained credulity even during the Obama administration when the series began-- and which increasingly seemed like a fairy tale in the Trump era.

Hall initially set the series in the State Department, believing that setting would allow the characters to avoid tribal arguments about domestic issues. But Madam Secretary’s concept of the foreign policy “center” included a sentimental view of imperialism. Both McCord and her husband Henry (played by Tim Daly) had worked for the CIA earlier in their careers. The premiere of the 2018 season included cameos by Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, and Hillary Clinton.

Madam Secretary’s primary story arc in its final season revolved around election interference by Iran—which in real life has been the favorite bogeyman of neo-conservatives. Unlike Trump, McCord knows nothing of a foreign country’s meddling, was outraged when she found out, and cooperated unreservedly with Congressional investigations. There was an unsettling aftertaste of “both sides do it” in this convoluted formulation.

On the other hand, the series included critiques of the military-industrial complex on issues that rarely get attention from the mainstream media. In one episode, McCord pushed for “de-alerting” of nuclear missiles to reduce the chance of an accidental war, persuading the Russians to reciprocate. Hall recalls “That’s one of the big aspirational swings we took. It would be an enormous undertaking to actually make that happen.” In another episode which was informed by research from Human Rights Watch, McCord prevented the military from deploying “autonomous weapons,” robots on the ground that are programmed to kill.

Near the end of the series, the drama depicted a “deep fake” video that made it look like the President and her husband were insulting to the Korean president, a deception that temporarily delayed a trade deal. McCord delved into the website YourVid (a fictional version of YouTube) and recognized that the site had an algorithm that led viewers from the fake to a series of increasingly radical right-wing memes. She despairingly told her husband “It all leads to white nationalism.” When McCord confronted the CEO of YourVid, the response echoed the kind of disingenuous free speech arguments that Mark Zuckerberg has been making lately.

The right-wing media site MRC indignantly wrote, “Madam Secretary subscribes to the theory that fake videos not only spread lies but radicalize people into racists as well.” Yet I suspect the complaint obscures the actual reason that a painstakingly centrist drama was the source of so much libertarian ire. Madame Secretary’s real sin was that it portrayed an effective female President who oversaw an executive branch populated by earnest hardworking policy wonks who worked for the greater good of the United States. Most of the issues dramatized by the series will fade in relevance over time, but its sympathetic vision of the foreign service will live on via Netflix (which also offers all seven seasons of The West Wing). The show’s aspirational portrayal of government service is probably what triggers the rage of Trumpists-- and what makes Madame Secretary, neo-liberal warts and all, a subterranean dream worth re-visiting.

Danny Goldberg And Pramila Jayapal Talk Nirvana

I asked my old friend and colleague, Danny Goldberg, who donated the Nirvana gold record we're giving away, to write a few lines about our contest. And he did:

To have been one of the managers of Nirvana when Nevermind was released was one of the highlights of my career and I treasure the gold record plaques I got for it. It was the album that includes the songs "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come As You Are," and "In Bloom" and it changed the course of rock and roll and established Kurt Cobain, (who wrote the songs, played lead guitar and sang them), as one of the great geniuses in the history of American music. I can't imagine a better use for this memento of the international success of Nevermind than to help Pramila Jayapal in her re-election campaign. Her district includes most of Seattle and she embodies the unambiguous progressive idealism that I associate with Nirvana. The fact that Donald Trump just singled her out for an insult in a tweet underlines her effectiveness.

That Pramila is a relentless advocate for humane immigration policies and is leading the Congressional Progressive Caucus towards Medicare-for-All, the new and improved version of which she wrote, and towards dealing effectively and urgently with the Climate Crisis, are reasons she deserves all of our support. Just last week, she was taking on House leadership in the battle over prescription drug prices.

Howie told me today that he asked the world's foremost appraiser of rock'n'roll memorabilia the value of the Nevermind gold award. We were both surprised when he said it was well into the thousands of dollars. I suppose that makes sense because the record quickly went platinum and eventually diamond so that ended the manufacture of gold record awards. This one is very collectible. Blue America is going to randomly select one winner from among the people who contribute to Pramila's reelection campaign here or by clicking on the ActBlue thermometer on the right. This contest ends on Saturday evening so don't let this opportunity pass you by. Someone just suggested that I tell Howie to take down the thermometer because it has so few contributors and that it's harder to get people to contribute when the number is small. But in this case, a small number of contributors means a lot better chance to win a random drawing than if there were thousands of people entering.

Yesterday Pramila sent a note to her supporters talking about what Nirvana meant to her as a fan of Nirvana's music. "I always felt their music reflected passion, skill and creativity; and that the band members genuinely loved music. That is why I’m so honored and thrilled that former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg has allowed us to give away a gold Nevermind record to one lucky donor to my campaign."

Pramila continued, "Kurt Cobain’s voice was raw, desperate, and sometimes heartbreaking always drawing you in and making you want to listen. But his and Nirvana’s power went beyond their music. They stood up for women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community at a time when it wasn’t easy to do so-- going so far as to call out racism, sexism, and queerphobia in the liner notes of one of their albums. Every day, I try to do the same in Congress-- to call out injustice and fight for bold, progressive change."

Kurt Cobain: "Republicans Are An Incarnation Of Satan. I Hate Them"

I know they don't teach basic civics in school any longer, but I'm old enough to have learned that we are a country of immigrants and that America was great because it was a melting pot-- even better than Canada which was disparaged as a mosaic in comparison. When Trump unchains his in-house neo-Nazi co-conspirator, Stephen Miller, and allows him to turn his energy (and bigotry) against legal immigrants, the Regime is directly attacking every family in the country. Remember when you read below, that Miller was the brilliant strategist behind family separation and border kidnappings. Yesterday the Jewish Daily Forward warned its readers that Miller's new plan stops citizenship for legal immigrants. The story originates with Julia Ainsley at NBC News, explaining how the Trumpist regime plans to "make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare."

And they plan to institute this newest Miller attack against America without congressional approval. He's drafting a plan that would target "immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children's health insurance, food stamps and other benefits."

Immigration lawyers and advocates and public health researchers say it would be the biggest change to the legal immigration system in decades and estimate that more than 20 million immigrants could be affected. They say it would fall particularly hard on immigrants working jobs that don't pay enough to support their families.

Many are like Louis Charles, a Haitian green-card holder seeking citizenship who, despite working up to 80 hours a week as a nursing assistant, has had to use public programs to support his disabled adult daughter.

Using some public benefits like Social Security Insurance has already hindered immigrants from obtaining legal status in the past, but the programs included in the recent draft plan could mean that immigrant households earning as much as 250 percent of the poverty level could be rejected.

...Miller, along with several of his former congressional colleagues who now hold prominent positions in the Trump administration, have long sought to decrease the number of immigrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year. And even before the rule is in place, the administration has made it more difficult for immigrants to gain green cards and for green-card holders to gain citizenship.

[Note: Miller was never in Congress, although he worked for several Republican racists and xenophobes-- Jeff Sessions, Michele Bachmann, Dave Brat and John Shadegg.]

Charles, the Haitian green-card holder who works as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital near Boston, said he was stunned to learn his application for citizenship had been denied. He had used a fake passport given to him by smugglers when he entered the U.S. from Haiti in 1989, but confessed to border officers and received a waiver from USCIS absolving him of his wrongdoing and allowing him to obtain a green card in 2011.

Now 55, Charles is a homeowner and a taxpayer and thought obtaining citizenship would be a smooth process. "I thought in this country everything was square and fair," Charles said.

But when he went for his citizenship interview in August 2017, the USCIS officers told him they were going to revisit the decision to waive the fake passport incident, meaning he could potentially lose his green card as well.

Then he received a letter in September telling him his request for citizenship had been denied.

He appealed the decision, but as he waits for a final verdict, his lawyer says his green-card status may also now be in question.

In late November, the Trump administration announced they would end temporary protected status for Haitians who came to the U.S. after the deadly 2010 earthquake. Charles's wife was a recipient of that protection and without him becoming a citizen, he would be unable to vouch for her.

But Charles's biggest concern is his daughter. Although she is in her 20s and a U.S. citizen, she has severe disabilities that make it impossible for her to live by herself.

Charles is unaware of Miller's new plan to limit citizenship for immigrants who have used public assistance. But it is likely to affect him because he has used public assistance to help care for his daughter, so she could end up further hurting his chances for citizenship.

Though its effects could be far-reaching, the proposal to limit citizenship to immigrants who have not used public assistance does not appear to need Congressional approval. As the Clinton administration did in 1999, the Trump administration would be redefining the term "public charge," which first emerged in immigration law in the 1800s in order to shield the U.S. from burdening too many immigrants who could not contribute to society.

..."Any policy forcing millions of families to choose between the denial of status and food or health care would exacerbate serious problems such as hunger, unmet health needs, child poverty, and homelessness, with lasting consequences for families' wellbeing and long-term success and community prosperity," said the National Immigration Law Center in a statement.

There's a Kurt Cobain quote-- a fake Kurt Cobain quote, as it turns out-- being circulated on the Internet. I know it's fake because Danny Goldberg, the manager of Cobain's band, Nirvana, decided to write about it this week at The Nation. The fake quote, which was first posted on the Trump Train Facebook page asserted that Cobain predicted "We’ll elect a true outsider. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a business tycoon… Someone like Donald Trump." Danny set the record straight:

I know that the quote is not only made up but it is also a grotesque perversion of Kurt’s beliefs. He often differentiated Nirvana from more overtly political punk bands like Dead Kennedys and Fugazi, but Kurt was unambiguous about where his political sentiments lay and, although he identified with anarchist imagery in some contexts, Kurt had no problem making choices at election time.

I remember the excitement in his voice when he called to tell me that he and Courtney Love had just contributed $100 each to Jerry Brown’s campaign for president in the Democratic primary in 1992. A few months later, Sergio Marchi, an Argentinian journalist, asked Kurt if he planned to vote in the general election, and Kurt answered “Yeah, I’ll vote for Clinton. The Democrats are very conservative but at least they are not as conservative as the Republicans.” Regarding the billionaire businessman third-party candidate Ross Perot, Kurt was equally clear: “The guy sucks. He’s rich; I don’t trust him as president.”

After the election, in an interview for The Advocate, Kurt elaborated: “I was helpless when I was 12 and Reagan was elected and there was nothing I could do about it. But now this generation is growing up and they’re in their mid-20s and they’re not putting up with it. I would rather have had Jerry Brown but I’m definitely happy that Clinton is in…. Chelsea seems like a pretty neat person, a Birkenstock wearing kid,” adding “Amy Carter’s pretty cool too from what I’ve heard. She’s been seen at Butthole Surfers concerts.”

Trump’s misogynistic attitude towards women would have deeply offended Kurt, who detested bullies and sexists. Explaining the lyrics to his song “In Bloom” when Nirvana’s breakthrough album Nevermind was released, Kurt was explicit: “I don’t like rednecks, I don’t like macho men, I don’t like abusive people.”

I suspect that Kurt would also have been appalled by the idea of a reality-TV star becoming president. In his famous chorus to “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Kurt sang, “With the lights out, it’s less dangerous, here we are now, entertain us.” He was not endorsing hypnotic passivity, he was satirizing it. As those who program Trump-supporting bots know, apathy and cynicism help discourage some people from voting, a syndrome that inevitably helps Republicans.

...To make his values clear Kurt wrote in the liner notes of the Nirvana compilation Incesticide, “I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us-- leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”

No one can know for sure how Kurt would view the coming mid-terms, but he did say in that Argentinian interview that he did just before the 1992 election: “Republicans are an incarnation of Satan. I hate them.”

Nancy Pelosi Doesn't Know Who Her November Opponent Is-- A Republican To Her Right Or A Democrat On Her Left

Did you know that not every congressional race in California has been called yet. First place in each of the 53 districts has been determined and announced. But who the top candidate will be facing in November hasn't been called in 11 districts, some inconsequential and some extremely consequential. These are the districts where the runner-up is still too close to call. So these candidates don't know who they're running against. Will Pelosi's opponent, for example, be challenging her from the right or from the left. In her case it doesn't really matter. But in Jeff Denham's case it does. Will he be fighting a crackpot Trumpist or a Democrat?

• CA-05

• Mike Thompson (D)- 67,956- (79.1%)
• Anthony Mills (I)- 7,998- (9.3%)
• Nils Pallson (I)- 7,032 (8.2%)

• CA-08

• Paul Cook (R)- 32,864 (41.5%)
• Tim Donnelly (R)- 17,966 (22.7%)
• Marjorie Doyle (D)- 16,967 (21.4%)

• CA-10

• Jeff Denham (R)- 24,640 (37.7%)
• Josh Harder (D)- 10,244 (15.7%)
• Ted Howze (R)- 9,349 (14.4%)

• CA-12

• Nancy Pelosi (D)- 93,238 (68.7%)
• Lisa Remmer (R)- 13,525 (10%)
• Shahid Buttar (D)- 10,420 (7.7%)

• CA-23

• Kevin McCarthy (R)- 56,089 (69.8%)
• Tatiana Matta (D)- 9,416 (11.7%)
• Wendy Reed (D)- 7,937 (9.9%)

• CA-25

• Steve Knight (R)- 41,310 (52.8%)
• Katie Hill (D)- 15,833 (20.2%)
• Bryan Caforio (D)- 14,305 (18.3%)

• CA-44

• Nanette Barragan (D)- 26,356 (65.8%)
• Aja Brown (D)- 6,700 (16.7%)
• Jazmina Saavedra (R)- 4.058 (10.1%)

• CA-48

• Dana Rohrabacher (R)- 34,074 (30.4%)
• Hans Keirstead (D)- 19,335 (17.3%)
• Harley Rouda (D)- 19,206 (17.1%)
• Scott Baugh (R)- 18,009 (16.1%)

• CA-49

• Diane Harkey (R)- 29,933 (25.5%)
• Mike Levin (D)- 20,316 (17.3%)
• Sara Jacobs (D)- 17,247 (15.4%) (called for Levin today)

• CA-51

• Jim Vargas (D)- 30,773 (62.8%)
• Juan Hidalgo (R)- 7,579 (15.5%)
• John Renison (R)- 7,388 (15.1%)

• CA-53

• Susan Davis (D)- 57,287 (62.5%)
• Morgan Murtaugh (R)- 13,786 (15%)
• Matt Mendoza (R)- 13,063 (14.2%)

But speaking of Pelosi, Danny Goldberg did a really interesting piece for The Nation yesterday, Nancy Pelosi Is Not the Enemy. He agrees that Pelosi has some shortcomings (like "the way the DCCC decides to support candidates in primaries" and the need to unify the party, often "disappointing the left." However, he wrote "Pelosi is far more progressive than her predecessors and those who have challenged her." He's right.

The New York Times’ Frank Bruni recently touted Dan McCready, a North Carolina Democratic House candidate who promises not to vote for Pelosi for speaker and smugly concluded that those of McCready’s ilk are “recognizing that a Democratic majority requires Democratic maturity.” Bruni’s delusional definition of “maturity” is based on the failed playbook of pandering to a shrinking number of “swing voters” at the expense of inspiring the far larger universe of women, people of color, and young progressives.

Admittedly, there are a few people in historically Republican districts that may prefer an anti-Pelosi Democrat, but the market for this message is very limited. Conor Lamb recently won a close election in a Pennsylvania district that went for Trump by double digits. In a Public Policy Polling survey of his voters, 43 percent said they voted for Lamb because “he will defend social security and Medicare,” 18 percent because “he refused corporate special interest money,” and only 7 percent because “he said he will not vote for Nancy Pelosi for House Speaker.”

The future composition of the House is not in the hands of those who voted for Trump last time but in those who opposed him. As Bernie Sanders has been saying, “When turn-out is high, Democrats win. When turn-out is low, Republicans win.” If Democrats win in all of the districts that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, they take control of the House. If they can also get the votes of those who voted for third-party candidates, there can be a truly powerful opposition to Trumpism. It’s hard to see how walking away from Pelosi, who has attained the highest electoral office of any woman in American history, will help turnout.

Demonizing Pelosi is a twofer for Republicans. It arouses the misogynistic part of their base while psyching out some Democrats into a fecklessness that depresses their base. Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News with a manipulative gleam in his eye, “There are so many people out there-- swing voters-- who do not want Pelosi as speaker.” Trump’s Office of Management and Budget head Mick Mulvaney suggested that Republicans “force” Democratic House members to take a position on Pelosi before the midterms. The purpose of the talking point is to bully Democrats into walking away from their most effective progressive legislative leader.

This is not to deny the need for Democrats to cultivate and promote younger people. Pelosi, Democratic minority whip Steny Hoyer, and assistant minority leader James Clyburn are all in their late 70s, but if someone has to step down to make room, it ought not to be Pelosi, who is also the Democrats’ best fund-raiser.

A simplistic age test for leadership is neither moral nor pragmatic. Some people lose focus and energy as early as their 60s and others are sharp and dynamic well into their 80s. The standard should be ideology and effectiveness. Bernie Sanders’s success with young voters suggests that what motivates them is moral clarity and a progressive approach to the issues This is even more true in the post-Parkland environment. Jerry Brown at 80 is one of American’s greatest governors. In the early days of Trump’s administration, Pelosi corralled all Democrats to stand in opposition to efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Maxine Waters has been one of the most effective anti-Trump media voices. Who exactly would replace them? As John Lennon said, “You say you got a real solution, well you know, we’d all love to see the plan.”

That said, sometime in the next several years, Pelosi will step down. If progressives want to address House leadership they should find an alternative to corporate Democrat Joe Crowley, who is angling to be her successor. The most plausible progressive who could succeed Pelosi is 49-year-old California Representative Ted Lieu.

In the meantime, Democrats should refrain from succumbing to right-wing propaganda. The Mercers and Kochs will spend millions to create “negatives” for any effective opponent of oligarchy. Whoever eventually replaces Pelosi will quickly be demonized. The remedy is not to cower in fear, but to fight back.

Trump's Crazy Republicans Have An Arya Stark List Now

Shouldn't Nancy Ohanian be commissioned to do the official Trumpanzee family painting?

Drawing on an historical perspective, author and activist Danny Goldberg bemoaned the left's circular firing squad for Nation readers yesterday. He wrote that "With excruciating predictability, mainstreamers blame young people for low turnout and for being seduced by the Libertarian or Green parties, as if finger-wagging at youth has ever been effective. Such lectures are like a rock band blaming the audience for not giving them an encore instead of improving the show. A certain number of low-information young voters struggling with college debt, stressed out by diminished job opportunities, and terrified of global warming were not motivated by charts showing statistical economic growth during the Obama years or by Tim Kaine’s harmonica playing. It is equally absurd when some on the left refuse to admit that the United States and the world would be in a lot better shape today if imperfect Hillary Clinton had won."

Democratic Party mainstreamers should stop claiming that they and they alone are pragmatic. (Or as a smug New York Times headline put it, “The Base Wants It All. The Party Wants to Win.”) That argument has long been highly debatable, but after 2016 it is delusional. They have controlled most of the candidate selection and most of the campaigns that have resulted in the weakest presence of Democrats in elective office since the age of silent movies.

But you know who's having even worse circular firing squad problems? The political right. Trump is encouraging television ad campaigns and primaries against Republican incumbents he doesn't like for one reason or another. One of his PACs already started running ads in Las Vegas and Reno against Dean Heller (R-NV) and he and his staffers have been meeting with perspective extremists who want to run against Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Bob Corker (R-TN). And the groups that feed the right-wing base its opinions are turning their big guns on Ryan, McConnell and Republicans in Congress.

“It’s shocking the amount of pushback he’s getting from his own party,” said Carl Higbie, a former spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. “It’s time to primary some of these longstanding congressional leaders that can’t get the job done.”

Conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt trained his ire on Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), arguably the most endangered GOP Senate incumbent in 2018, for opposing the repeal and replace bill.

Hewitt questioned Heller’s intelligence, saying on his Tuesday show that he’s not the “sharpest knife in the drawer” and accusing him of not grasping the damage he was doing to the Republican Party.

Hewitt even compared the list of Republican defectors from the bill to a fictional list kept by Arya Stark, a character on HBO’s Game of Thrones, of people who have been marked for revenge after wronging her family.

“We know the list to blame. It's like #AryaStark list. And it just keeps getting longer,” Hewitt tweeted.

Hewitt said that, along with Heller, Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.), Susan Collins (Maine), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah) belong on that list for opposing the bill.

Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler fumed, ticking through the names of senators who he said abandoned conservative voters by opposing a subsequent measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act and put off replacement.

“[Alaska Sen. Lisa] Murkowski, [West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore] Capito and Collins. People are furious. And not one ounce of it is directed at Trump,” Meckler said.

The Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), which funded ads in the past against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans, vowed to back primary challenges against Republicans who did not back the repeal efforts.

“Republicans have promised to repeal ObamaCare for years, and now with President Trump in the White House there is no excuse for them to break their promise,” said SCF chairman Ken Cuccinelli.

The outrage illustrated the intraparty divisions that have opened up in the Republican Party over healthcare and could imperil other parts of Trump’s agenda.

...The Drudge Report placed the blame right on Ryan and McConnell, with the heavily trafficked site's banner all day Tuesday showing a photo of Ryan and McConnell over the headline "MOST UNPRODUCTIVE CONGRESS IN 164 YEARS."

Meanwhile, back to the Democrats for a moment. Last yesterday, the GOP passed, 248-179, a heinous fracking-related bill, H.R. 2910, that will allow natural gas companies to seize private property and conduct surveys of private land without consent of the landowner. Only one Republican voted against it, but 11 from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- almost all of them Blue Dogs-- voted for it. The culprits were mostly the usual suspects who always vote with the Republicans and with the corporate special interests that pay for votes-- like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX), Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA), Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Vicente Gonzalez (Blue Dog-TX). Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), who voted against this bill, told her constituents that "Billion-dollar natural gas companies have no right to infringe on Americans’ private property-- end of story. This attack on the pipeline approval process would not only allow expanded use of eminent domain, but also deny communities the opportunity to participate in the public input process. Instead, it gives corporations free rein to cause irreparable harm to the environment."

One of the worst of the oil industry whores among Democrats is Gene Green, who represents a Houston shipping channel area district with severe environmental and pollution problems. Hector Morales is a young activist and school teacher challenging Green for the seat he has used for too long to serve the interests of Big Oil against the interests of his own constituents. He's one of the few progressives challenging an entrenched incumbent conservaDem anywhere in the country-- the toughest job in politics (please contribute to his campaign here). This morning, when we asked him about Green's vote with the Republicans, he told us that "This should not come as a surprise as Gene Green is one of the founding members of the Congressional Oil & Gas Caucus along with Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, to name a few. Green was also one of the scarce Democrats that voted in favor of the Keystone Pipeline with the abhorrent excuse the pipeline. Perhaps the Congressman should look no further than the Manchester neighborhood deep in the heart of the 29th Congressional District where all the refineries are located. After all, the low-income, heavily Latino community has high rates of childhood leukemia, asthma, and bronchitis-- an observation that has been backed up by data from the Environmental Protection Agency and the University of Texas which found “unacceptable” levels of cancer-causing pollutants in Manchester’s air. Gene Green is nothing more than a corporate shill who has gotten away with representing the oil and gas companies while claiming to look after the well being of the community he has sworn to protect. But with $260,000 worth of campaign contributions in this quarter alone from special interests, what more could you expect?"

Relatively Recent Roots Of Standing Up To Trumpism-- The Sixties

My old friend Danny Goldberg, a father of two kids who seem to adore him whenever I see them together, runs a very hands-on successful business. And he still manages to find the time to write thought-provoking, insightful books. His newest one, In Search Of The Lost Chord-- 1967 And the Hippie Idea, brought me back to the time when I-- as well as Danny-- was coming of age. 1967 was 50 years ago-- a lifetime... and part of my own formative years. That summer I hitch-hiked to Mexico City with my friend Bob and came back to New York via San Francisco where I had slept on a stair in a Haight Ashbury crash pad and took acid in a school bus that wound up at an outdoor Grateful Dead concert on the other side of a bridge, probably Marin.. but who knows?

In her NY Times book review this weekend, 1967: A Year In The Life Of Idealism And Anarchy, Sheila Weller admires Danny's determination to treat the "hippie idea" seriously with "a thorough, panoramic account of the culture, politics, media, music and mores of the year to demolish the idea that it was trivial... Goldberg moves from the province of privilege (Time magazine estimated that there were 300,000 self-identified hippies in America in 1967, mostly white and middle class) to the fight against segregation in the South and the rise of the Black Power movement and the Black Panthers. He deals consummately with the power players in the antiwar movement and S.D.S. At times the book feels overpacked. Still, that flaw hides a virtue: proving that so much activism and passion can be crowded into barely more than a single year. When Goldberg was writing his book, that might have been a useful message. Today, in Trump’s America, with a fueled and gathering resistance, it is a potentially mirroring one."

Last month, Danny penned an essay for The Nation, We Have Seen Times This Dark Before-- Here’s How We Fought Back that elegantly makes the point that "1967 offers many lessons for those who want to counter Trumpism." He reminds his readers something that an icon of that era, Martin Luther King, said shortly before he was assassinated: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that." How hippie is that! And how needed to face down the Trump Regime!

1967 was worse than 2017-- at least so far. 50,000 of us were killed fighting in Vietnam. Nixon was formulating the Southern Strategy that led right to Señor Trumpanzee. "Today’s alt-right," wrote Goldberg, "has its antecedents in slave owners, plutocratic haters of FDR, and the John Birch Society. J. Edgar Hoover, Paul Ryan’s idol Ayn Rand, and Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn who were all alive and spewing poison in 1967. Trump is not the first president to invite speculation about his mental health."

Like Trump, President Johnson demonized the media, telling Goodwin (without offering any evidence), “The communists control the three major networks and the 40 major outlets of communication.” LBJ bad-mouthed the New York Times to Georgia Senator Herman Talmadge: “There are two or three Jewish boys there that are-- according to our phone taps-- on the communist side of this operation.”

...What are the lessons from 1967 for those opposed to Trumpism? In Todd Gitlin’s book The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, the word “resistance” appears 88 times. It is not clear, in retrospect, that more confrontational tactics did anything to help the cause. Gitlin acknowledges that as the Vietnam War became increasingly unpopular with the American public, so did the anti-war movement. Alienation and rage without positive inspiration spawn apathy, which strengthens the unrepentant right wing. As Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia, among others, pointed out in the ’60s, protest rooted in anger and polarization-- even if temporarily cathartic-- usually backfires and creates more darkness than it dissipates. As Naomi Klein suggests in her new book title, No Is Not Enough, the left needs to express a consistent alternate positive vision in broadly understandable cultural language.

Secondly, there must be a reduction in tribal schisms. The divide between the “counterculture” that focused more on inner changes and the “revolutionaries” who focused more on political protest helped neither progressive political goals nor a moral/spiritual balance. Among political radicals, the infighting was so chronic that Che Guevara referred to the American left as a “circular firing squad.” One of the primary tactics of the FBI COINTELPRO programs aimed at weakening the anti-war and civil-rights movements was to foment internal discord.

It was no accident that the DNC e-mails that were curated for media consumption by WikiLeaks and whoever aided them focused on fanning the flames of resentment between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. (One encouraging sign is Sanders and new DNC Chair Tom Perez’s unity tour.)

A third lesson from the ’60s is that liberal elites need to respect the energy and insights of youth if they want to win. In 1967 as now, the younger generation was the most progressive and largest in history, and yet was largely ignored by most Democrats. (In Shattered, the recently published account of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, only a single paragraph refers to efforts to communicate with millennials, a reference to an ad Sanders filmed in support of Clinton that was never aired).

Finally, there needs to be a balance between action that addresses immediate suffering, and the long-term consciousness-raising that is required to make lasting changes.

Schumer’s Betrayal

by Danny Goldberg

My father, Victor Goldberg, was in the 195th Field Artillery Battalion during World War II, landing on Utah Beach nine days after D-Day. Like other members of his unit he was given Battle stars for being in five bloody battles against the Nazis in Normandy. Later he was among those American troops who liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany.

For the last several years before he passed away my Dad and I would watch the political TV shows every Sunday and talk about the issues of the week. He would have been deeply saddened by the announcement this past week of opposition to the Iran deal by Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Nita Lowey, two ostensibly liberal Jewish Democrats whom he had supported and voted for. He was an FDR liberal. He loved Israel and he had a bias in favor of Jewish politicians because he felt a kinship with them. At the same time, from personal experience he knew the horrors of war. He believed in war only as a last resort, and he would have loved President Obama’s speech at American University laying out the rationale for the deal.

Schumer and other renegade Democrats opposing their President have talking points filled with nuclear jargon. But no matter how they spin it, they are claiming that Democratic foreign policy leaders who they support on every other subject are wrong-- and that Dick Cheney, and the Republican Presidential candidates for President are right.

The most likely explanation for Schumer’s behavior is that as someone whose public and private identity has been so supportive of Israel he has been influenced by the implacable opposition to the deal by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Schumer, Lowey, Brad Sherman and other Jewish Democrats who are opposing the President seem oblivious to the fact that Likud propagandists have tried to create a radically different definition of the phrase "pro-Israel" from what it meant in the first half century after the war against the Nazis.

For decades the defining "pro-Israel" issues at the Congressional level were foreign aid and military support to help defend Israel. For many Americans, especially Jews like my Dad, there was a powerful post-Holocaust obligation to the Jewish people. Israel also supported American goals in the cold war and in the oil economy.

But after Netanyahu became Prime Minister, he tried to transform the definition of "pro-Israel" to include a much larger influence on the overall foreign policy of the United States, a radical departure from previous Israeli regimes. This became vividly clear during the debate leading up to the Iraq War. American acolytes of Netanyahu and his party were stridently supportive of President Bush in pursuit of that disastrous mistake.

In 1996, five years before 9/11, a memo was written to newly elected Prime Minister Netanyahu by neo-con Richard Perle (who along with co-author Douglas Feith would later serve in the Bush administration at the time of the Iraq War). Perle advocated a new hawkish strategy for Israel called "A Clean Break," writing,  "This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq-- an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." In private meetings with American Jews, Netanyahu often lamented the fact that the first Gulf War had not "taken out" Saddam.

My Dad’s hero, Senator Ted Kennedy, and 22 other Democratic Senators and 133 Democratic House members-- a majority of Democrats at that time-- believed correctly that Dick Cheney and his minions manipulated "intelligence," and they voted against the war. History has proved them right.

To this day, the American people do not know why we went to war against Iraq. All we know is that the talking points the pubic was fed by the Bush administration and their neo-con chorus were false. Similarly, we have no idea what the real reason is that Netanyahu and his supporters are against the deal with Iran that every other ally of the United States supports.

In recent years, in another radical departure from the past, the Netanyahu government has taken partisan sides in American politics, identifying increasingly visibly with Republicans, culminating in the unprecedented speech that Netanyahu made to a Republican-controlled Congress to criticize a Democratic President’s foreign policy.

President Obama campaigned explicitly on changing the mindset that led to the Iraq War and on negotiating, if possible, with Iran. He is not the one who has played "bait and switch."

My Dad would be relieved to know that the Schumer-Likud definition of what it means to be "pro-Israel" is not shared by most American Jews. Many prominent Jewish Democrats support the deal, including Senators Barbara Boxer, Bernie Sanders, and Brian Schatz. A recent poll by the Jewish Journal asked whether Congress should "vote to approve or oppose the deal." American Jews favor approval over disapproval by a margin of 53%-35%.

Precisely because the Iraq war was so awful and the arguments for it so preposterous, it is arguable that President Obama won the Democratic nomination in 2008 primarily because he had opposed the Iraq War. Modern-day Democrats who think that actual Democratic voters have somehow warmed up to the views of neo-cons are deluding themselves. Moreover, it is not a stretch to imagine that upwards of 90% of non-Jews who vote Democratic support the President. Schumer et al. must be assuming that their vote on the Iran deal will be quickly forgotten. It won't be.

Recently a minister in Netanyahu’s coalition government, Religious Services Minister David Azoulay from the Orthodox Shas party, claimed on Israeli radio that Reform Jews aren’t "real Jews." Netanyahu knew that this was not good politics at this time, so he publicly disagreed with Azoulay but tellingly kept him in his government.

There is an American version of Azoulay’s bigotry coming from some Jewish organizations suggesting that people like my Dad and the rest of our family are not "real Jews" if we don’t support Netanyahu and oppose the President we twice voted for.  Greg Rosenbaum, head of the National Jewish Democratic Council, which supports the deal, writes, "I and members of this organization have personally found ourselves being called 'Nazis' and 'kapos,' told that we are enemies of the Jewish people and leading Israel to another Holocaust."

Those few Democrats who play along with the Likud either for ideological reasons or to get the benefit of neo-con billionaires are in for a rude awakening.  Despite a vicious well-funded PR campaign funded by Netanyahu supporters smearing and lying about President Obama during his first term, he still received 69% of the Jewish vote for reelection. He is the only Democrat since FDR to win a majority of the overall popular vote twice.

It not realistic to expect politicians who you support to agree with you on all issues. But the choice between this deal and a war with Iran is one of such extraordinary consequence that it is and will remain indelible in the minds of the base of the Democratic Party. I hope that progressives mount primary challenges to every single Democrat who votes to oppose the President on this deal.

But the morality of avoiding another needless and horrible war is more important than politics. In the name of my father, I have a plea to make to those Democrats who have veered into the morass of intellectual and moral contradictions epitomized by former Senator Joe Lieberman. Search your souls and change your mind. Even if you vote against the bill, do not vote to overturn our President’s veto. That, as my Dad would say, would be a shande.

Danny Goldberg is the author of the books How the Left Lost Teen Spirit and Bumping Into Geniuses and is a member of the board of directors of Americans for Peace Now.