Going Forward... What's The Democratic Party Going To Be?

No one knows what's going to happen, but it would be a safe bet that Americans aren't going to have a chance to vote for a real progressive for president in a very long time, probably longer than I'll be a sentient being. Or maybe not. Maybe Biden and the Democrats will screw up so badly that the Democrats lose Congress in 2022 and then the Democrat in the White House in 2024-- whether Biden or Kamala-- loses to a Republican who also screws up. So 2028... I may still be walking around and sentient. My grandmother was at that age.

But... I still feel cheated. I so wanted one damned good great president in my life. Instead they've all be mediocre at best and, more frequently, piles of stinking, rotting garbage. I wanted to see Bernie win so badly. It wasn't in the cards-- the Democratic establishment made certain of that.

Yesterday, Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Sean Sullivan wrote about an interview they did with Bernie on Sunday. They predicted that Bernie's DNC speech last night "will effectively close an improbable odyssey-- two bids for the White House that together formed the backbone of a new, insurgent liberal movement." Thanks in great part to Bernie, Medicare-for-all, free college tuition, the Green Anew Deal and a chastening of the nation’s financial elite have all come to the fore of a grassroots Democratic Party-- and have pulled even a horribly corrupt status quo establishment slightly to the left and, perhaps put the breaks on a corrosive drift toward more-centrist views that have been been dominant since the Clinton DLC wing of the party managed to take over and change the focus from working class to managerial and donor class.

They quoted Bernie: "Ideas that we raised in health care, in education, in the minimum wage, in climate change, in criminal justice were ideas five years ago that people perceived to be radical and extreme. Today they are mainstream, and today they are actually being implemented by states and communities around the country."

They saw the slot allotted by Biden to AOC as a kind of passing of the torch. That's OK but there's more to it than that. I think I saw just about every Velvet Underground live performance in New York. They were my favorite live band when they were first getting going. There are many claimants to this but I think Michael Stipe first said, "not that many people ever bought that first Velvets album, but everyone who did started a band." And thank God they did. And not that many people saw that first Ramones national tour-- but it was Howie Klein (not the thieves who stole it as their own) who compared them Johnny Appleseed and noted that everyone around the country who went to see them started their own punk band.

AOC isn't the only political heir of Bernie's but one who even Biden was unable to deny at least 60 seconds of speaking time during his convention. But think of all the people Bernie has inspired who are now serving or will soon be serving at every level of government and who are committed to the somewhat revolutionary approach he imbued in a whole generation of Democrats.

When David Feldman introduces me on his radio show every week, he says something to the effect of Blue America supporting progressive and socialist candidates. I often remind him that this cycle, there was just one actual socialist candidate-- Shaniyat Chowdhury, who ran for a southeast Queens district held by loathsome and corrupt party boss Gregory Meeks, a New Dem. Shan, a first time candidate, didn't win, although close to a quarter of the voters backed him in the primary. "We’re only getting started," he told me this morning. "This was just the beta as a first time candidate. Change makers persist. I’ve continued to organize post election around housing rights, anti-poverty, and foreign policy. Sometimes I forget how young I am and how young our collective movement is with Bernie Sanders. Which speaks to the level of despair of what working people are going through. We are tired of waiting for change to happen election cycle or establishment democrats telling us it’s not our moment. I wake every morning thinking Trump or not, will everyone have free healthcare? Are we ending universal poverty and unjust wars? Are Black lives going to matter beyond symbolic gestures? The answer is clear. For that, I’m not going away anytime soon. Whether it’s this election or the next, we must continue to change the tides in the sea towards a more prosperous future. I will run for Congress again because I believe it is there where we can fight for humanity throughout the world."

In 2016 then-Flagstaff city councilwoman Eva Putzova was a Bernie delegate to the convention. This cycle she ran for Congress against a reactionary Blue Dog incumbent who spent most of his political career as a Republican and still votes as a mainstream Republican. Although the full face of the establishment opposed her. Yesterday, her district's election results were finally certified by Arizona's Secretary of State and she ended the race with 41.4% of the vote, winning in the most populous county and doing exceptionally well in the southern part of the district despite DCCC and the Arizona Demmocratic Party tilting the scales in favor of the incumbent. "We ran," she told me today, "a spirited, principled campaign that showed the district is winnable by a progressive candidate. If things fall in place, it's not out of the question that I'd run for the seat again. We have learned a great deal, built an impressive infrastructure, and we wouldn't be starting from scratch." That's how progressives win-- two cycles. It took that long for Alan Grayson and it took that long for Ro Khanna and Donna Edwards, each primarying their own party's establishment choice.

One of the people I met while Hector Oseguera was running for Congress told me during the convention broadcast last night the "for the past month, Hector has focused on the future of the progressive movement. Although we've witnessed incredible strides since Bernie's first presidential run, Hector often says 'we still have such a long way to go.' Policies like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal have not yet been realized. We are in the middle of a generational shift, and Hector is taking a central role in directing that shift across North Jersey. Bernie's presidential runs paved the way for a new generation of leaders, but that door sits merely ajar. It is now up to the Millenials to throw that door open and lead our nation into a new progressive era. It is often said that the true measure of a person is how they respond in times of adversity. Given the response I've seen from Hector in the past month, I wouldn't be surprised to see him throw his hat into the ring again." Yep... I get the same feeling!

Kim Williams ran for the strongly Democratic Central Valley seat held by worthless Blue Dog Jim Costa, who Biden will likely appoint to his dream job next year-- ambassador to Portugal. Kim told us she entered her race this year because she "wanted progressive policies to become part of the conversation in a poor, rural district that needed it. Throughout my campaign, we said things out loud that others would not, and I am extraordinarily proud of what we accomplished. We started a district-wide conversation and we knocked on 20,000 doors to promote a policy platform that resonated with actual people and not the local party elite. Our efforts proved that there was demand for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal while helping Bernie, and other progressives, win primaries in the district. And our work continues. I will not run again this cycle and I won’t need to. My focus today is on tearing down barriers for progressives and combating the incredible corruption embedded into every layer of our political system. CA-16 will see another candidate carry the progressive banner forward, and I am delighted by the base of support that is rallying behind her. My friend, Yenifer Gallegos-Mejia, is jumping in as the only candidate with the backbone to stand for progressive ideals and against Fresno’s duplicitous political class. She will not only build upon early momentum and carry us over the finish line, she will inspire an emerging generation of activists that will build a more equitable America. She is the future, and I will stand behind her and every other progressive running in the district."

"Sanders-style left-wing populism," wrote Costa and Sullivan, "is gaining power throughout Europe and the Americas, at times replacing an older guard of liberals who embraced globalization. Across Western democracies, campaigns rooted in passionate emotion and grievance have won mass followings. 'I’m very proud. I am very proud of the movement that we have built,' Sanders said. 'The younger generation is overwhelmingly progressive, and they want to see their government function in a different way than in the past.' Sanders pointed to Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), two allies who recently won congressional primaries, as evidence of a healthy and competitive left flank inside the Democratic Party."

In the eyes of his core backers, Sanders came agonizingly close to seizing control of the Democratic Party with his strong showings in the initial contests of the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. There were days when they thought he would be unstoppable.

But it didn’t pan out four years ago, as Hillary Clinton scooped up victories and support from superdelegates-- and as Sanders grew furious with the Democratic National Committee. Nor did it work out earlier this year when former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg muddied Sanders’s plans for a clean-cut victory in the Iowa caucuses and a politically hobbled Biden suddenly revived his campaign in South Carolina, in part because of alarm in corners of the party about a Sanders nomination.

Sanders and his supporters are trying to learn from his success during the 2020 primary campaign in courting young voters in Iowa and Latino voters in Nevada-- and from his stumbles, particularly with Black voters who rallied around Biden in March.

Exit polls showed that the struggles Sanders experienced among Black voters four years ago against Clinton largely continued. Sanders’s fervent push to broaden the electorate with new voters was never realized.

Sanders’s supporters argue that campaigns come and go but that ideas move glacially. And history has precedent for movement campaigns having a long-term impact. In 1964, conservative Barry Goldwater lost the presidential election in a landslide. But his campaign laid the ideological groundwork for his supporter Ronald Reagan to win the White House 16 years later.

If the United States eventually moves toward democratic socialism in the coming years, Sanders will deserve significant credit for mounting campaigns that pulled the Democrats to the left, said Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan-based liberal organizer.

“He didn’t only take on the establishment but the governing consensus in America that markets are the answer,” El-Sayed said. “He drove the conversation that we are all having. He lost two elections, but he won the future in the sense that the party is now a lot browner, blacker and younger and sounds like Bernie Sanders.”

Faiz Shakir, who served as Sanders’s campaign manager in 2020, said the defeats were not rejections of the senator’s ideas but a product of a “party in transition.”

“There is no question the kinetic energy and dynamism in the Democratic Party is with progressives. But the party is in transition,” generationally and politically, Shakir said, “and you’re going to have fits and starts.”

...Biden, who once fashioned his candidacy as a vessel to restore political norms and bolster institutions, has started sketching out a more transformational-style presidency that would seek to marshal a sweeping response to the coronavirus pandemic, a severe economic crisis and racial upheaval.

“What we’re seeing is more than lip service,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who served as a national co-chair on the Sanders campaign. “The Biden team has been very intentional about listening to not just Bernie Sanders but a lot of his key policy advisers.”

Some Sanders activists have refused to join with the senator in offering the former vice president their unequivocal support, underscoring the importance of Sanders’s pitch for unity on the convention’s opening night.

In a column for the socialist magazine Jacobin, former Sanders adviser David Sirota mocked the task-force rollout as “an SNL skit.”

“They are a mix of party dinosaurs, corporate zombies and some terrific progressive voices,” Sirota wrote of the group members.

Over the weekend, Tlaib said she voted against the Democrats’ platform and cast her delegate ballot for Sanders, expressing outrage about her party’s refusal to upend what she called a “for-profit system that is leaving people to suffer and die just because they cannot afford health care.”

The Sanders political operation has labored to keep things calm, asking some supporters he picked to represent him at the convention to sign agreements barring attacks on other candidates or party leaders, combative confrontations on social media or talking to reporters without approval.

The move, which carried a threat of being removed as a delegate, has the effect of blunting one of the most powerful if divisive tools of the Sanders support network-- its unrestrained online presence and tendency to stoke controversy through social media, which has at times spiraled into abuse of his opponents.

...“It’s not about looking back,” [Bernie] said. “It’s about looking forward.”

Rachel Ventura is on the Will County board and primaries a garden variety Illinois New Dem this cycle. Yesterday she told me that "Bernie is right, it’s about looking forward. Currently, the corporate Democrats continue to ignore the people, whether it’s the call of free college, Medicare for all, the green new deal, or even legalizing marijuana. The hope and change we are looking for does not rest in the present, but in the future. We need to take control of our own future and run our own candidates. We need more bartenders, teachers, community activists, nurses and blue-collar workers taking the reins of power from the elitists who currently govern for the wealthy few. We see candidates like Marie Newman and Cori Bush win on their second time running. How many progressive candidates who ran this year will run again in 2022? I know I’m leaning that way and with an army of supporters already pressuring me to run coupled with national organizations biting at the bit to endorse our campaign again, there’s definitely a compelling argument to run. While taking home 42% of the vote after being outspent 17 to 1 is impressive, it isn’t a win. The win will come from continuing to champion the people’s voice."

Rachel continued: "Today and every day until the 2022 election, we need every person to drown out the false media voice and demand better representation, Medicare for All, and The Green New Deal. We need people to have political conversations with their friends and neighbors about how both democrats and republicans have failed the people in a time of COVID and economic uncertainty but pulled no punches to protect their corporate donors. It isn’t enough to call for our politicians to be anti-corrupt; we must throw them out and elect people who will truly represent common sense solutions. Our government, via the politicians, for too long have told us what we deserve and don’t deserve but it is ‘we the people’ that need to tell them what it is we need and demand. Now is not the time of polite negotiations, now is the time for impatience and bold action. Regardless of who wins the Presidential Election, the people must rise up and demand better policies. We cannot allow them to control the messaging, whether at the pulpit or on the news stations. That fight continues from everything Bernie has fought for, from the things MLK fought for, even all the way back to Henry Wallace. Our fight won’t be over in 2020 and it certainly won’t be over in 2022. But it is the time to stop pulling punches. To stop the DNC or RNC from gaslighting us. We all, collectively need to call them out. I’m excited for the future and have already begun collaborative talks with the 2020 congressional candidates like Eva Putzova, Morgan Harper, Melanie D’Arrigo, Robert Emmons, and so many more. Join us in the continued fight!"

Dorothy Reik is widely considered one of California's most visionary progressive leaders is the president of the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains and an elected member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party Central Committee-- elected by the largest majority of anyone else in the county-- and is a member of the California Democratic Party Executive Board. This morning, she told me that "Looking forward without looking back is how we got where we are today. We cannot really move forward until we understand how we got where we are right now and until we conquer the forces that led us here, from corporate greed to racism and everything in between. As I write this at least 850 delegates have refused to support the platform because it does not include Medicare for All. What evil brought us to the point where we confuse 'insurance' with 'care'? Yes, Bernie has moved us forward in many ways but we cannot progress further until we admit to who we are and where we have been.

Do You Support A Center-Right Party? You're A Conservative???

I lived in Holland for four years and it was a pretty progressive place, Amsterdam more than the country as a whole, but even the most conservative areas seemed more progressive than the U.S. When I was there, the political party that headed the government was the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy-- better known as the VVD. It's a classic center-right party and pretty much stands for everything the American Democratic Party stands for, not the FDR Democratic Party, but the floating garbage heap Bill Clinton turned the Democratic Party into... except the VVD is maybe slightly more progressive. If the classic center-right party is like the American Democrats, is there a Dutch political party like the GOP? Of course: the PVV (the Party for Freedom). It isn't as far right as the GOP but it's generally a neo-fascist party like what the Republicans have drifted into since Reagan became president. The Dutch also have a couple of left-of-center parties as part of their legislature-- the Socialist Party, the Green Party and the Labor Party-- but the U.S. doesn't have anything like that.

Early this week, AOC spoke at an event honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and she explained that there are "left members inside the Democratic Party," progressives, like herself, who are pushing the Democratic Party towards it's Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt roots. "She noted, reported Newsweek "that there are some 'true believers' within the Democratic Party who think capitalism can end poverty. 'If anything, that's probably the majority,' she said, adding that she disagrees. 'That's an area in which I agree with Dr. King, that that assessment is flawed,' Ocasio-Cortez said as the audience erupted into loud applause." She described the Democratic Party as a "center-conservative" party, not as a party of the left. Like King, she believes that capitalism has ingrained poverty into society.

It's why actual progressives argue for structural change in society... and for real change in a Democratic Party which is dominated by its own Republican wing-- New Dems, Blue Dogs, corporatists, corruptionists... AOC: "We don't have a left party in the United States. The Democratic Party is not a left party. The Democratic Party is a center, or a center-conservative, party." She noted that even with a large, robust Democratic majority-- led by a woman pretending to be vaguely progressive, "We can't even get a floor vote on Medicare for All, not even a floor vote that gets voted down. We can't even get a vote on it. So this is not a left party."

Newsweek brought up a King speech gave the year before he was assassinated: "And one day we must ask the question: Why are there 40 million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that, more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society." Sounds like Bernie, AOC and a tiny, tiny, tiny handful of today's post-Bill Clinton Democrats. Not like Joe Biden, that's for sure. In fact, AOC had noted in an interview that "In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America we are."

Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a democratic-socialist, as does Sanders and many other progressives within the Democratic Party. This block of lawmakers advocates for progressive policies such as universal health care, or Medicare for All; free college education; student loan forgiveness; a higher minimum wage; and a Green New Deal to address climate change.

Most Democrats-- most, think about that-- do not advocate for those things. It astounds me, that given a choice, Democratic primary voters-- for whatever reason-- often pick the neo-liberal establishment candidates rather than the progressive reformers... not always, but often. In the last few weeks some real progressives have beaten right-of-center Democrats in primaries-- Mike Siegel in Austin, Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones in New York and good and very clear examples. But far more progressive reformers didn't make it. I asked Mark Gamba, a thoughtful mayor in Oregon who I expect to see running again, what happened in his congressional race against very conservative Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. "Well the short answer," he told me this morning, "is that Schrader used all of that corporate cash to outspend me 10 to 1. Our campaign was really dependent on the grass roots, on door knocking and on events where folks could get to know me and ask questions. Covid killed most of those opportunities, and so it went back to being a race won on who could spend the most. The really funny thing was that when you read Schrader’s 6 mailers, he came off like a progressive. He talked about everyone getting health care and taking strong climate action, neither of which he will actually do. Until we have publicly funded campaigns, the candidate who is the most sold out to the corporations will be the one most likely to win. All the political labels aside, what Americans have to decide is: Do we want a society that benefits everyone, providing a dignified and decent life for every single American? Or, do we want a society designed to make a handful of people obscenely wealthy, while having millions living in desperate poverty? That is literally what we have now, and nothing about the status quo and the neo liberal posturing is going to change any of that."

I asked Alan Grayson, who lost his first race and two years later went on to be, arguably, Congress' most important and effective progressive champion, what he makes of this party split and why more progressives don't get elected. "Progressives," he told me yesterday, "operate at a disadvantage because right-wingers in the party corrode the ability of progressives to deliver on the promises that they make, which undermines the credibility of the party as a whole. When a RWNJ in a red state says 'I will ban abortion more than ten minutes after conception,' there’s no debate about whether he’ll be able to deliver on that promise. When a progressive says 'I will deliver affordable healthcare to everyone,' the widespread public response is 'uh-huh. Well, you haven’t done it so far.' In fact, it’s been more than a decade since anyone in a position of authority in the Democratic Party has promised anything to anyone, except perhaps to lobbyists. This tends to discredit the whole notion that you can make the world a better place-- progress-- which is the first eight letters of progressivism. Obviously, there are serious money issues, as well, without a doubt.  But money is not the mother’s milk of politics. The mother’s milk of politics is promises-- promises that you keep."





Florida produces so many really bad politicians but, ironically, the state is responsible for some really good ones as well. Adam Christensen, still in his 20's and a first time congressional candidate, is going to fall into the latter category. I think Grayson will see a young version of himself when he meets him. "At the end of the day," Christensen told me, "even those who say that they want change and they want progress, don’t ever want to feel extreme. They want to feel like they are at the center, the norm. What has happened is the one party actively fights to silence the radicals within it, and the other doesn’t. The republican party understands that if they allow a few choice individuals to push the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable, then they are able to push the conversation farther than they ever would’ve been able to before. The Democrats do not do that, they fight tooth and nail to silence the left side of their party because they don’t want to appear 'extreme.' When in reality, because they do this, they themselves are seen as the “extreme” left even though they are 'center-right' in any other country.

An entrepreneur and CEO himself, Christensen pointed out that "Every good negotiator knows that you always ask for more than you believe that you were going to get, and you should always have things you are willing to give up in order to get to where you wanted to be in the first place. The Tea Party effectively pushed Republicans to the right and made their moderate wing seem reasonable, despite the fact that they are extreme. Democrats need to do the same thing, they need people/activists pushing farther than anyone has pushed (ie. nationalized healthcare/defund the police) so that things like Medicare For All seem like the 'compromise position,' the 'safe position.' They need a truly left party, so that the semi-progressive ideas can be seen as the middle ground instead of the extreme left. We need a truly LEFT movement in the US to move us back to where we should be, where we were 60 years ago. It’s not 'extreme'-- it’s smart politics."

Hector Osceguera, a thoughtful young reformer in New Jersey who I expect to see running again, just ran his first race. It won't be his last. So what happened to make the voters in northeast Jersey go for an establishment boss-candidate instead Oseguera. "There is one very Jersey-specific reason for the outcomes of progressive challengers in the state," told me. "Our byzantine and anti-democratic ballot structure known colloquially as the 'County Line,' artificially props up incumbents and means that we were effectively running against two Presidential candidates in Joe Biden and Cory Booker. Lining up establishment candidates the way we do in this state creates a perception issue that always hurts challengers and gives an unearned benefit to incumbents."

While we realized how the COVID pandemic made us shift resources to the digital landscape, there was not enough attention on reaching those not on social media. The voting age population trends not to be as active on the web and we should have done a better job finding ways to reach our senior citizens during COVID.

The future lies in taking the lessons we learned this year and amplifying those efforts. Progressives still have a lot of work to do, and now that the primary season is over, we can go back to the drawing board and think like organizers again. Even if this race didn't have the outcome I wanted, I now hope to lay the foundation for the next progressive challenger.

Today Is Primary Day In New Jersey

New Jersey has 12 congressional districts but, unfortunately, not all of them have primary battles. Primaries are healthy and in many districts the only way to hold entrenched incumbents even vaguely accountable. The only New Jersey incumbents with ProgressivePunch "A" scores are Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12) and Donald Payne (NJ-10). Bill Pascrell, Albio Sires-- each in a super-safe district-- have "D" scores while Donald Norcross, Tom Malinowski, Andy Kim, Mikey Sherrill and Josh Gottheimer, one of the most odious Democrats in the House, all have "F" grades. These are the districts where the incumbent has no primary today:

• NJ-01- Donald Norcross, (New Dem) from the corrupt South Jersey Machine family
• NJ-03- Andy Kim (D)
• NJ-07- Tom Malinowski (New Dem)
• NJ-11- Mike Sherrill (Blue Dog)

Blue America looked at the candidates running-- seriously considered several-- and only endorsed one: Hector Oseguera who is running in the 8th. Please, if you have family or friends in Hudson, Essex and Union counties and in Hoboken, Elizabeth, Weehauken, West New York, Newark, Jersey City, Kearny, Harrison, Belleville and Bayonne call them and ask them to consider voting for Hector today. The other candidate we came closest to endorsing was Will Cunningham in South Jersey. He's in a multi-candidate primary to see which Democrat will take on a Machine/DCCC right-wing sleaze bag, Jeff Van Drew, who has jumped the fence and is now running as a Republican. The would-be Machine/DCCC replacement is another moderate, Brigid Harrison, although Amy Kennedy of the famous political dynasty is said to be ahead. In endorsing Cunningham Sunday, South Jersey's most-read newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer said they " like Cunningham’s support for bold criminal justice reform. Cunningham’s is an inspiring life story-- homeless while a Vineland High School student, he earned a Brown University scholarship. His is a generation whose time has come." He's probably the best-prepared to take on Van Drew and pointed out that "Now is not the time for family dynasties or political machines that disrupt the will of the people."

That's today's biggest media race, although if any of the conservative incumbent Dems lose, it will be a big story. At HuffPo, Daniel Marans picked 3 races to watch today. NJ-02 was first, of course, noting that "Harrison has the backing of some of the same influential Garden State players who anointed Van Drew in 2018. Norcross has not officially endorsed her, but state Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a childhood friend and staunch political ally of Norcross’, has given Harrison his blessing. And a super PAC tied to Norcross has spent more than $270,000 on Harrison’s behalf. The support of machine-backed county parties helped secure Harrison preferential real estate at the top of the ballot alongside party incumbents." She's been endorsed by Machine shills Cory Booker and Bob Menendez and most of the state’s Norcross Machine-controlled labor unions.

Marans added that "for the coalition of progressives backing Harrison’s well-funded rival, Amy Kennedy-- a schoolteacher married to former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D)-- the election is primarily about crippling the South Jersey machine. The ways in which Kennedy is to Harrison’s left on policy are hard to spot, but Kennedy is more critical of the state’s corporate tax break program, which gave more than $1 billion in incentives to Norcross’ businesses, charities and allies. That point of contrast is a key reason why the progressive New Jersey Working Families Alliance, Murphy and two left-leaning labor unions-- the New Jersey Education Association and the Communication Workers of America-- have gotten behind Kennedy’s bid. Norcross’ network has bitterly fought Murphy’s effort to raise taxes on the state’s millionaires, as well as a task force Murphy convened to review the state’s corruption-ridden corporate tax incentive program."

So what about Cunningham? Marans mostly summed it up like this: "Given the criticism of both Kennedy and Harrison-- who are also both white-- there could be a natural opening for Will Cunningham, an openly gay, Black attorney, to emerge as the alternative. Cunningham, who rose from poverty to work as an aide to Booker and as a senior investigator for the late-Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), is running as an unabashed progressive in the mold of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). He supports Medicare for All, tuition-free college and divestment of police budgets in favor of greater social spending. But... he has failed to attract the attention of major progressive groups or the Congressional Black Caucus. That’s partly because of Cunningham’s weak showing in the 2018 primary election, as well as his apparent failure to adequately court progressive stakeholders. Altman of New Jersey Working Families Alliance could not recall hearing from him prior to the group’s endorsement of Kennedy. Kennedy is 'more progressive than Brigid Harrison and she can win,' Altman said."

There is also some residual feeling-- and mistrust-- in the district that Cunningham wasn't a "real" candidate in 2018 and muddied the water so badly for progressive challenger Tanzie Youngblood that she never had a real shot against Van Drew.

Josh Gottheimer and friend

Marans then skipped over to NJ-05 to write about "one of the left's favorite villains," Josh Gottheimer, a Trump-friendly Blue Dog pile of shit. Arati Kreibich is challenging him from the left. As of the June 17 FEC filing deadline he had $8,478,312 in his campaign war chest and she had just $144,562. Indivisible has spent $126,356 trying to bolster Kreibich, while a grifter/scammy conservative operation, Patriot Majority, spent $175,092 trying to help Gottheimer. Kreibich, as well as several other progressive candidates, don't seem capable of putting together winning coalitions or doing what it takes to win other than backing progressive platform ideas. If I lived in the district I would certainly vote for her without hesitation but I wouldn't bet a nickel on her being able to win.

If I were to bet on a long-shot candidate, it would be on Hector Oseguera-- and I did-- and Marans wrote about his race, briefly, to close out his story yesterday.

NJ-8: A New Generation Challenges The Old Guard

It is hard to get worked up one way or another about Rep. Albio Sires, who has represented racially diverse and working-class urban parts of northeast New Jersey since 2006. Sires, a mainstream Democrat, is not a member of any ideological caucus, choosing not to challenge party leadership either from the right or the left.

But Sires, an immigrant from Cuba and former mayor of West New York, is part of a local political machine that local progressives believe has stymied bolder policy changes, as well as the growth of younger leadership more in line with the district’s changing demographic makeup. New Jersey’s 8th Congressional District, which includes the historically heavily Cuban American hub of Union City, is increasingly populated by immigrants from Caribbean and Central American countries.

Hector Oseguera, an attorney and anti-money laundering specialist descended from the latter group of immigrants, is challenging Sires. Oseguera, who volunteered for Sanders in 2016 and Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, is running as a progressive populist committed to eradicating “the injustices imposed by an economy rigged against working-class people.” Unlike Sires, Oseguera would fit in more with the “Squad,” the nickname for the group of outspoken progressive freshman lawmakers that includes Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

Oseguera is also part of a slate of progressive local candidates running against a particularly entrenched corner of New Jersey’s famously clannish machine politics. Through a combination of energetic organizing and a bit of luck, Oseguera’s slate will occupy the coveted Column A spot on the ballot in Hudson and Union counties, where most of the district’s residents live, The Intercept reported in May. Many voters instinctively vote Column A, since it is normally real estate reserved for machine candidates.

Oseguera’s odds of victory appear slim. The Intercept’s look at the race is one of the rare bits of national coverage of the primary in New Jersey’s 8th District. And Sires, himself not a prodigious fundraiser, has outspent the challenger by a 10-to-1 margin.

In late June, though, Oseguera picked up the influential endorsement of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance. (In addition to Kennedy, Kreibich and Oseguera, the group is backing the reelection of Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman in New Jersey’s 12th District.)

“In a deep-blue district like the 8th, you have a guy assuming that he was going to be able to sit in that seat for as long as he wants it,” Altman said. “But times are changing in the country. Times are changing in New Jersey.” 

It's Pretty Easy To Tell The Difference Between A Progressive And A Corporate Democrat-- NJ-08

New Jersey's primary is July 7, two weeks from today. I wish it I could say it looks better for the progressives taking on the corrupt machine candidates up and down the state. But it doesn't. Too many candidates thinking a campaign is basically grabbing Bernie's platform and lounging around Twitter and Facebook. No one's ever won a race that way-- ever. The New Jersey candidate I feel best about-- and the only one Blue America endorsed-- is Hector Oseguera who's up against corrupt, conservative, former Republican Albio Sires, a hawkish backbencher who never did a thing for his district. Oseguera and his team are fighting a real race and I feel confident that if he can muster enough money to get his compare and contrast message out to the voters, he'll win.

His district, NJ-08 includes most of Hudson County, parts of Essex and Union counties and the cities of Hoboken, Elizabeth, Weehauken, West New York, half of Newark and parts of Jersey City, Kearny, Harrison, Belleville and Bayonne. The district is 55% Hispanic, 44% foreign-born and strongly enough Democratic that the primary is, in effect, the whole ballgame. You can help Oseguera win his seat by clicking on the Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer on the right.

The other day, Sires, who has an "D" score from ProgressivePunch was bullshitting Jonathan Salant at NJ.com and out popped a real whopper: "I’m probably more progressive than the guy I’m running against." Not on this planet and not by any possible definition of the word "progressive."

I asked Oseguera what the hell Sires is even talking about and who he thinks he's fooling. I mean his voting record is pretty standard Dem compared to when he used to be a Republican but a progressive? Not a chance. "You might say my opponent is more progressive, all you need to do is ignore his record and all our policy positions. Unlike my opponent, I am not a Johnny come lately to this movement. I have a lifetime of progressive activism under my belt, from my days at law school volunteering for Elizabeth Warren, to the Millions March NYC protesting the killings of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, to, most recently, volunteering for AOC and running on an unapologetically progressive platform. Locally, I was part of the movement that succeeded in getting Hudson County to rescind its 287(g) agreements with ICE. These are contracts that my opponent and his allies support because running inhumane concentration camps is apparently very profitable for the County government."

Oseguera told me that he's "fighting to get big money out of politics, fighting for racial justice, and championing the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. My opponent is an advocate for none of those. Quite the contrary, my opponent takes tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from luxury real-estate developers and Exxonmobil, has never seen a foreign intervention he didn't like, and pals around with war criminals like Elliot Abrams. He is not a co-sponsor of Pramila Jayapal's Medicare for All Bill, which I support, and refuses to even say the words "Green New Deal," until leadership gives him permission. My opponent has no platform to speak of, and has never associated himself with the progressive movement; that is until he realized he was horribly out of step with the people of this district. He is seen as a 'strong Democrat' by some, because for well over a decade he was the only game in town. I guess compared to absolutely nothing, he might call himself a progressive; but compared to a true progressive fighter like me, my opponent is revealed as the bland, Republican-lite, neoliberal he really is."

In terms of confirmed cases, Hudson County was the worst hit in New Jersey-- 19,316 total and even yesterday the most new cases and the most new deaths. Essex County is the 4th worst hit county (18,582) in the state and Union the 6th worst hit (16,340 cases). Could Sires have fought harder for the people in his district? Anything would have been fighting harder since he did virtually nothing. Being better than Trump is too low a bar for as deeply blue as NJ-08. People there have the right to expect a proactive champion for working families. That would be Hector Oseguera, not Albio Sires.

Two Insurgent Candidates-- A Democrat In New Jersey And A Republican In Georgia

We've met Hector Oseguera before, when Blue America endorsed him in May. He's running against the corrupt Democratic Party establishment and the notorious Hudson County machine in New Jersey. The other candidate, Marjorie Taylor Greene... well you may never have heard of her-- unless you follow Qanon or Trump's tweets and saw him congratulating her when she came in first 9 days ago in the GA-14 Republican primary.

There were half a dozen candidates in the primary for a blood-red seat (R+27 that Trump won with 75.0% of the vote), after Tom Graves announced his retirement. Greene came in first 40.3% of the vote, her closest rival, John Cowan, receiving just 21.0%. The primary runoff is on August 11. Oseguera's New Jersey primary is a few days earlier, July 7.

He told me the race in New Jersey is "about a generational change. This is about turning the page on a neoliberal order of 'Republican-lite' Democrats who take money from luxury developers, vote to militarize the police, and have no genuine connection to the community and the people they represent. My opponent takes corporate PAC money, I do not. My opponent pals around with war criminals, I do not. My opponent thinks 'ICE does great work,'" I do not. My opponent only shows up in the community for a photo opportunity and a fancy speech, whereas I spent my entire life surviving in this community."

Oseguera is our kind of candidate, exactly what Congress needs to help balance out whichever conservative candidate we wind up in the White House next year. "This is about a humble son of immigrants, who played by the rules, got good grades, and still found all the cards stacked hopelessly against him," he continued. "A community activist who found that his local politicians were insular and unresponsive to the needs of the community. This video is about centering the concerns of the people who live in the 8th district, rather than the big money donors who have exploited the working class of this nation. The people of this country are crying out for justice. They are saying loud and clear, that they want to change the status quo. This video aims to show those people that someone is listening."

Green is nothing like Oseguera-- polar opposite in fact. She's a hard-right Republican and Q-Anon conspiracy nut and a deranged racist lunatic. When you open her campaign website, this is what you see:

The first endorser listed: Jim Jordan. And she's all about supporting the police. Dig a little deeper into her online history and you can see why Jordan is so enthusiastic about her. Among other thing, she proudly proclaims her belief that Hillary Clinton is involved in Satanic worship and that Ilhan Omar married her brother and that the Las Vegas shooting was staged to promote gun control. Her campaign ad is nothing like Oseguera's (up top). This thing is probably not on her way to a mental institution, but to Congress:





The main point of her campaign is that she will be slavishly devoted to Señor Trumpanzee. Yesterday Ally Mutnick and Melanie Zenona, writing for Politico, reported that the DC Republican establishment in Congress wants nothing to do with this walking freak show and that "the House’s highest-ranking Republicans are racing to distance themselves" from her. They were so happy to get rid of Steve King and now they fear they may wind up with someone much worse. The GOP establishment fears that "Greene-- a wealthy businesswoman who already drew national attention because of her belief in a trove of “QAnon” conspiracy theories -- could create an even bigger black eye for the party if she wins the nomination. Greene will face neurosurgeon John Cowan in the Aug. 11 primary runoff."

A Greene attack ad; she's connected

McCarthy said he has no tolerance for his racist and Islamophobic rantings and his second-in-command, Steve Scalise endorsed Cowan, noting that her history of comments "are disgusting and don’t reflect the values of equality and decency that make our country great." Oh, dear-- the Republican thought police.

Marianne Williamson is a prominent supporter of Hector Oseguera and endorsed his campaign and is trying to help him raise money and get his message out. This evening, she told me that "Hector Oseguera represents the best that America has to offer: smart, young, and dedicated to making our country a better place. He sees what’s wrong and has a passion for making it better; even more than that, he has the plans and experience and understanding to help him do it. And this is what we need in Congress."

Alan Grayson Wrote Legislation To Demilitarize The Police In 2014... Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn And Their Allies Made Sure It Failed

They were ready to roll the tanks if she got too frisky

Every Member of Congress loves-- or, until this month, used to love-- photo ops of them "delivering" goodies to their local police departments. They never consider that those goodies might one day be used against their own constituents. In August, 2014, garden variety policy brutality and murder brought on the "Ferguson unrest." Two months earlier, Alan Grayson introduced H.R. 4870, an amendment to an appropriations bill that attempted to demilitarize the police. Alan told me at the time that he bent over backwards to make it clear it was not about guns and ammunition. His amendment would have prevented the military-- under Clinton era's disastrous 1033 Program-- from sending local police departments "aircraft (including unmanned aerial vehicles), armored vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, toxicological agents (including chemical agents, biological agents, and associated equipment), launch vehicles, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs, mines, or nuclear weapons." So... all the guns they needed but... no tanks, guided missiles or nukes (to use against American civilians). Although Grayson managed to round up 62 supporters, there were 355 no votes, including, I might add, Lacy Clay, who supposedly represents Ferguson, Missouri.

Today Grayson told me that "After it was voted down, two months later, Ferguson happened.  We all saw tanks and militarized police there, on city streets. Two different Members of Congress came over to me and asked me, 'how did you know that was going to happen?'  I was too polite to give them my real answer. My real answer was: 'how did you not know that was going to happen?'... I introduced the Grayson amendment to keep [heavily military weapons] out of the hands of police because I have eyes, and I can see. What I see is endemic and pervasive racism, certainly not only in law enforcement, but in every corner of society, from umbilical cord to tombstone. When you put armored vehicles and drones into the hands of people who already have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, isn’t it obvious in which neighborhoods they will be used? And if that’s not obvious, in which neighborhoods do you actually SEE them used? Neighborhoods of lefthanded people? Neighborhoods of redheads? Neighborhoods of people who prefer paper over plastic? No; you see them used in African-American neighborhoods, treating human beings in ways that we don’t even treat cattle."

After Ferguson, then-President Obama enacted Grayson's amendment by executive order and it was in place... until 2017, when Trump reversed the order and gave the Pentagon the green light to start selling "excess" military equipment to local police forces again. The other day, AOC was wondering aloud on Twitter why the Pentagon has so much "excess." Meanwhile, Trump's tiny pecker gets hard just thinking about scenes like this:

Since 2014, the program has facilitated the transfer of over $5 billion in "excess" military equipment to the police. Many people who are talking about "defunding" the police are specifically talking about that money.

One of the members who happily strutted up to the House well to vote against Grayson's amendment was was Albio Sires, reactionary New Dem of New Jersey. I asked his progressive opponent this cycle, Hector Oseguera, how he and Sires differ on the police problem. "You might wonder why some of these elected officials call themselves Democrats at all," he told me this morning. "My primary opponent was actually a registered Republican until the mid-90's, he regularly votes for Trump's war budgets, and recently voted to let the NSA read your browser history, so it's no surprise he's a fan of militarized policing. I stand as the polar opposite, and recently released a Social Justice platform that includes ending Qualified Immunity, and demilitarizing our local police forces, all things my opponent refuses to fight for. There is no legitimate reason to have a police force armed with chemical weapons, and ballistic missiles, but that's exactly what my primary opponent sought to allow. In a democracy, we should not accept the mixing of our police and military forces. Unfortunately, that's what Democrats like my primary opponent, constantly seek to do."

As long as we're discussing Grayson, I might as well bring up that he endorsed Mike Siegel (TX-10) for Congress. "Mike cares about the right things, which means that he can make a difference. Talk to any number of Democratic Members of Congress or candidates for any length of time, and you’ll realize that there are startling differences in what they say are important to them. Many Democrats neuter themselves, before they even get elected, because they can’t even articulate anything real, realistic and meaningful that they would like to achieve in office. Know what matters matters-- you can’t possibly accomplish anything useful if you don’t even know what you want to do. If you listen to Mike Siegel, you realize quickly that his head’s on straight, he’s got the right attitude, and that gives him a real chance to get good things done."

Pelosi is suddenly leading efforts to reform the way the police do their jobs, but in 2014 she made sure Grayson's amendment failed. I asked her progressive opponent, Shahid Buttar, how he and Pelosi differ on the police problem. "The biggest difference between me and Nancy Pelosi," he told me today, "is that she settles for acts of theater to advance her career dedicated to her corporate donors, whereas I am concerned about our communities-- and have dedicated my career to defending them, not only through legal activism, but with my body in the streets, as well. I’ve been an active participant in the movement for black lives since before the Ferguson  uprising, and announced in 2018 a policy platform including support for demilitarizing police, ending qualified immunity, and creating a national registry of violent police. We’re glad that-- as she has on so many other issues, from labor rights and congressional war powers to executive accountability and election security-- Speaker Pelosi has adopted some of our positions despite her earlier intransigence. Despite her recent shifts, however, she remains well behind the movement’s demands to defund police departments and end the disturbing phenomenon of private prisons, which we have also supported. Our communities need voices in Congress for whom solidarity is not a political stratagem, but rather a reflection of our longstanding commitments." That's why DownWithTyranny's only endorsed candidate so far this cycle is Shahid. You can help support his campaign at this link.

The Wrong Man-- In The Right Place At The Right Time

What a horrible Washington Post headline: Joe Biden Let Police Groups Write His Crime Bill.Now, His Agenda Has Changed. I saw a poll the other day released by CNN that shows Biden decisively beating Trump in November... sort of. 55% of registered voters say they will cast their ballots for Biden and just 41% say they'll vote for Señor Trumpanzee. That's a mammoth gap. BUT... just 37% of those Biden voters say they are voting for him, as opposed to 60% who say they are voting against Trump. That's an important distinction. (70% of Trump's voters are voting for Trump.)

Personally, I like voting for someone, not against someone worse. Biden is so the wrong man for this time. I can hardly think of any plausible Democrat who would be worse. (NOTE: Bloomberg is neither plausible nor a Democrat.) But Trump is not just worse. Trump appears to be an existential threat to democracy, America, the planet. Biden is... well, just ole Status Quo Joe. The guy who will probably go down as the man who became president because people figured he wasn't as bad as Trump. (Fingers crossed we're figuring this right; we have a bad track record lately.)

Biden has never been and will never be a leader-- which is what the times call for, post-Trump. He's a shrewd discerner of superficial public opinion who can hop aboard the train as it leaves the station. And now he has a team to figure that out for him and... well, he''ll be less likely to follow some of his worst instincts any longer. Some of them. But don't kid yourself about what the contours of a Biden presidency is going to look like. One place to start is looking at the 100 billionaires bankrolling his ascension to the presidency--men and women who aren't writing big checks because they like his facelifts and cosmetic dental work. Last month, Forbes made that task easy for us to see. Is 100 a lot? Well, it's actually 94 but,, yeah, it's a record number of billionaires-- and 2 more than Trump has. Yesterday Business Insider updated the Biden and the billionaires story. Hit the link to find all the billionaires giving Biden relatively small contributions and how LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave his SuperPAC millions, but there are other ways of looking at Biden's unsuitability.

Jacob Rosenberg at Mother Jones camp up with a perfect example that harkens back to that Washington Post headline up top: Joe Biden Doesn’t Want to Defund the Police. He wrote that Biden issued a statement making it clear as day that he "would not support defunding the police. He did say there is an 'urgent need for reform,' and he advocated for body-worn cameras and further diversification of the police force... This isn’t surprising news, exactly. Biden is a moderate. But it’s remarkable that he had to clarify his position at all. The Minneapolis City Council announced on Sunday it was disbanding the police to invest in community programs. Other municipalities are considering similar action. A world without cops, as our own Madison Pauly wrote about, is not only imaginable but increasingly something activists are putting on concrete lists of demands. Who would’ve thought a few weeks ago that Biden would have to specify that he supports keeping the cops around?"

Hector Oseguera is a first time candidate for Congress. He's running in northern New Jersey, in a district (NJ-08) that includes part of Newark, Jersey City, Bayonne and Elizabeth and all of Hoboken, Union City and West New York. Don't expect him-- or progressive candidates like him-- to see eye to eye with Biden or his status quo-like administration. Take policing. Oseguera: "Militarized policing is a perfect example of the bi-partisan slime that infects our government. Throughout the 90's, we saw the so-called Democrats cave to a right-wing perspective on policing, and pursue 'tough on crime' laws that disproportionately affected Black and Brown communities. My opponent, as recently as 2012, congratulated two police departments in Jersey City and Bayonne on $3 million grants to militarize local police forces. Just this week local activists went toe-to-toe, and won a fight against the unanimously Democratic Hudson County establishment, that in this political climate sought to spend $26k in taxpayer funds, to purchase riot gear. This announcement comes on the heels of two weeks of completely peaceful protests in New Jersey. After community activists mobilized, the local machinery backed down. Today, this campaign released its Social Justice platform that seeks to demilitarize the police, end the War on Drugs, abolish Qualified Immunity, and make "White Caller Crime" a federal hate crime. We are all too familiar with instances of White individuals calling the police on Black people for simply existing. These frivolous calls waste public resources, endanger the lives of Black brothers and sisters, and we should treat these 'White Called Crimes' as federal hate crimes. A militarized police force truly should be seen as a scourge in any democratic society, and I am proud to take a true progressive stance on the issue."

America is going to need men and women in Congress like Hector Oseguera to hold Biden's feet to the fire and remind him what it means to be a Democrat (in the best sense of the pre-JFK party). Please consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the 2020 Blue America congressional thermometer above.

Most American Voters-- Regardless Of Party-- See Establishment Corruption As The Key 2020 Issue

On Tuesday, a poll by Harris X for The Hill showed that a majority of American voters consider establishment corruption the top issue going into the 2020 election. And, keep in mind, it isn't just about Trump and his family and his Mafia-like regime. Fully half of Republican voters said a corrupt political establishment is a big problem, along with 57% of independent voters and 67% of Democrats. Progressive Democrat Kara Eastman is in a statistically tied race to defeat Trump enabler Donald J. Bacon in Omaha. This afternoon she noted that "When we look at all the political problems in the country, it usually comes down to one thing: money. Money has a corrupting influence on our politics and our politicians. Politicians receive money from certain interests then pass legislation on behalf of those interests. It’s really not too complicated."

Voters view a corrupt political establishment as a bigger problem than both healthcare and gun violence. 58% of registered voters in the May 18-19 survey said a corrupt political establishment is a big problem in the United States, while an addition 27 percent viewed the issue as a moderate problem. I decided to ask some of the congressional candidates who have been campaigning on their opponents' corruption to weigh in. Hector Oseguera, who is running against entrenched Democratic incumbent Albio Sires and the notoriously corrupt New Jersey Democratic machine, told us that "Bipartisan consensus is hard to come by, but on the issue of corruption, right, left, and center all agree. Large majorities of the American people regularly cite corruption as a core concern regarding our federal officials. Few people trust politicians to act in the best interests of the people, and that's a crisis of democracy. This campaign is challenging one of the most entrenched political establishments in the country; and while some doubt the ability of a scrappy Millennial to oust such a powerful machine, supporters have been consistently drawn to my anti-corruption platform. This platform tackles the corrupting influence of money on our elections, takes a sledgehammer to the infrastructure of offshore shell companies that crooks use to hide their illicit funds, and introduces pro-democracy reforms to get people engaged in our democracy once more. Matthew Hale, professor of political science at Seton Hall University, said that if there’s one issue I could run a successful campaign on in New Jersey, it's the issue of corruption."

Cathy Kunkel is up against an equally corrupted West Virginia machine-- this one Republican. "West Virginia Can't Wait (a coalition of more than 90 candidates spearheaded by Stephen Smith for governor)," she told us, "surveyed more than 10,000 voters last summer and fall and found that-- by far-- West Virginia voters also view political corruption as the biggest problem in the state. Just today, ProPublica published an expose of West Virginia governor Jim Justice, a billionaire coal CEO with a long history of failing to pay his workers and fines. Justice, who was elected as a Democrat and then switched to Republican, retains interests and involvement in his businesses as governor. And in West Virginia's 2nd Congressional district, Representative Alex Mooney-- who sits on the House Financial Services Committee-- receives his top campaign contributions from the financial services industry and then votes to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other bills that serve Wall Street instead of West Virginia. West Virginia Can't Wait candidates-- all of whom have pledged not to take corporate money in our campaigns-- are campaigning against corruption and working to turn out voters who have been turned off by the corruption in both parties."

In Texas, progressive candidate Julie Oliver is up against the same kind of sewer politics and corruption has been an important part of her campaign. "The toxicity, gridlock, and hyperpartisanship that we see in Congress," she said, "is a function of the money that has utterly corroded that institution. Ending corruption and getting big money out of our politics is one of my top priorities-- and it is why I have refused all PAC money, so that Texas will never have to worry about my arm being twisted behind closed doors.

"I'm running against one of the most corrupt and ineffective career politicians in Washington, who happens to be a Republican. But the corrupting influence of big money in Congress affects Democrats and Republicans.

"If we can get big money out of Congress, if we can end gerrymandering, and if we can stop the undue influence of outsize spending on our elections, we will have an institution in Congress that is worthy of the people it's supposed to serve."

Campaigning For Congress-- In The Midst Of The Pandemic

Asshole without a mask campaigns among men all wearing masks

Right before the shutdown, an unsymptomatic campaign volunteer gave everyone on a congressional campaign COVID-19-- as well as the candidate's entire family. No one died. But it sure screwed up the campaign. Yesterday, the Attorney General of Michigan, Dana Nessel, said Señor Trumpanzee is no longer welcome in the state after he adamantly refused to wear a mask in public as part of a campaign stunt. "He is a petulant child who refuses to follow the rules. This is not a joke." Michigan has been a hard-hit state that is working very diligently to flatten the curve by encouraging-- not discouraging-- everyone to wear a mask. Michigan's 53,510 caseload increased by 501 cases while Trump was in the state yesterday and 69 more people died, bringing their total deaths to 5,129. (Yesterday there were 5,358 cases per million people, worse than every European country other than Spain.)

A political consultant friend of the blog, Eric Hogensen, wrote up some suggestions for campaigning during the pandemic for his clients and shared it with us. "The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting changes to our lives," he wrote earlier this week, "have altered politics. In addition to moving election dates, restrictions on the usual messaging tactics have changed campaigns, possibly for the rest of the year."

Digital

With canvassing is limited or unavailable, social media will become more important and valuable this year. Online videos, both planned and live, can be used by the candidate to get their message out. A candidate can also host question-and-answer sessions that connect a candidate to a voter. Organizing a virtual night based on any one of the main issues taking place in the district you are running in, is a great way to reach voters. Also, utilizing more apps with platforms such as Nextdoor to reach voters in your district directly will greatly benefit your campaign.

Branding

The typical political messages may seem less appropriate during these challenging times, so messages should be inspiring and hopeful. It’s important to remember not to change your brand as a candidate during these times. You can pivot with creative messaging and expanding your brand but don’t change who you are.

Field

Instead of canvassing door-to-door, phone banking will become more important. Use community mapping by starting with who you know and identifying who is influential (such as local leaders). Build a list of these individuals and then ask them to introduce you to their connections. Predictive dialer services should also be utilized even more during this cycle. Also, the targeting for different constituencies through phone calls should be looked at with a closer lens to evaluate your support as you begin your outreach. With volunteers making calls from home, it can actually be easier for calls to get made. Set up weekly goals and a leaderboard so volunteers can reach enough voters.

Although these are challenging times, candidates should recognize that there are still alternative ways to reach voters, and that it is important to spread the message of hope and unity during this crisis.

I asked some of the Blue America-endorsed candidates how they're coping with keeping a campaign moving forward during the pandemic. Indiana progressive Jim Harper was the first to respond: "Our campaign acted early to make sure that we were doing no harm. I haven't shaken a hand for months, and we quickly cancelled our in-person events even before stay-at-home orders were issued. We have switched our focus to phone calls and digital outreach, but also work to make sure that we as a campaign are giving back during a difficult time. Every week, we engage in multiple service activities. This is a good opportunity to remain connected with our community, while lending a helping hand."

If Jennifer Christie wins, she will have flipped an open red seat in the suburbs north of Indianapolis. There's a crowded field of Republican-lite Democrats and Jennifer is the only one running on a straight-up progressive platform. This morning she told us that "We started knocking doors right after the New Year. We were out several times per week long before any other campaigns had started canvassing. We knocked in thr sleet and snow. Then the pandemic hit. We stopped knocking with an abrupt halt to keep our team and constituents safe. We immediately switched over to phone-banking, text-banking, and zoom-events. We are on the phone daily and it’s going really well. Because people are home more, we talk to a lot of people. And we get overwhelmingly yes commitments with enthusiasm for our truly progressive campaign and the chance to send a scientist and a mom to Congress."

The Newark, Elizabeth, Bayonne, Hoboken, Weehawken, Jersey City district that Hector Oseguera is running in is very different from IN-05. For one thing, the district is as blue as it gets and the electorate is 65% Hispanic. The winner of the primary is the next member of Congress. Hector is campaigning hard against an entrenched, machine-backed incumbent, Albio Sires. Earlier today, Hector told us that "Incumbents normally hold a tremendous advantage over their challengers, having much better access to funding and to influential groups within their districts. This new reality has quickly leveled off this traditional power disparity, as both elected officials and their challengers adapt to life in lockdown. This campaign specifically, has shifted to online advertisements on platforms like Facebook, which can have as much impact and reach as traditional television and radio ads at a fraction of the cost. Letter writing campaigns offer remote outreach opportunities that give voters a personal, one-on-one experience, while maintaining social distancing. Even our activism need not grind to a halt. I've participated in a number of COVID-safe rallies at ICE detention centers, where activists drive around prisons, honking profusely, to let the inmates and staff know that we are aware of the unsafe conditions inside. All this chaos can provide creative, tech-savvy campaigns a much needed advantage on a traditionally skewed playing field. How campaigns adapt to this new world will vary depending on the contours of their districts; but the old Latin proverb, Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat, hold true today... fortune favors the bold!"

"In the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic," said Rochester, NY candidate Robin Wilt, "our campaign first off transitioned to mutual aid efforts. We saw the communities that were most engaged in our campaign suffering, so we started making deliveries for a local food pantry, which turned out to be one of the few food pantries in the county that has continued to operate during the crisis. We also transitioned our phonebanks to include senior check-ins. In addition to mutual aid efforts, we knew that our original strategy would depend a lot on direct voter contact, so since we didn’t have that in our toolbox anymore, we transitioned our outreach to social media, and we began doing weekly COVID-19 community check-ins. These are updates where we highlight the issues facing our frontline and most vulnerable community members to raise awareness and build action around moving forward through this pandemic together, with no one left behind. We have now done these public forums and outreach to the arts and self care communities, for those that are housing insecure, the immigrant, migrant, and refugee community, the incarcerated community, the climate justice community, the mutual aid community, educators, voting rights advocacy, etc. Yesterday, we hosted a call with Medicare for All advocates. We promote them via Zoom on Facebook Live, and it’s a means to engage voters around the priorities that matter most to the electorate."

"So, basically," she concluded, "our team has shifted to a strong digital outreach effort through social media channels. The results have been terrific, reaching an average of 60,000 voters each week. We’ve also never strayed from our activist roots. What we’re finding during the pandemic is that raising awareness and taking action to support our frontline communities is the best mechanism to spread our message.

Mckayla Wilkes is taking on Pelosi's #2 (and K Street's #1)-- Steny Hoyer. "Prior to COVID-19," she told us today, "we were knocking on over 10,000 doors a weekend so when we had to suspend canvassing we were obviously a bit concerned as to how we would continue to get the word out about our campaign. But thankfully, we were able to transition fast due to our committed volunteers. Since we shut down canvassing, we’ve made hundreds of thousands of calls, seen an increase in volunteers by 1000%, raised over $300k and see no signs of slowing down. Just yesterday, we launched our first TV ad campaign throughout the district!"