It Appears As Though Trump Wants To Kill As Many Americans As He Can Before He's Forced Out Of The White House

 

The scope of the disaster of the pandemic in the U.S. is the most blatant indictment of Trump's "leadership" so far.

The kind of actions-- by government and populace-- needed to defeat the pandemic went quickly into effect in east Asian countries-- from China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea to Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. And it worked. The pandemic may have started in east Asia, but no one complained that wearing a mask or social distancing was an unacceptable infringement on their freedoms-- and the pandemic is pretty much under control across the region, certainly in comparison to the U.S. or Europe.

Over the weekend, 697,396 new cases were reported. 99,174 of those cases were reported in the U.S. It was a very different story in mask-wearing, social distancing east Asia. These were reported new cases for Saturday and Sunday:

• Japan +1,225
• South Korea +164
• China +26
• Hong Kong +21
• Thailand +17
• Vietnam +11
• Singapore +10
• Taiwan- 0

The combined population of these 8 countries is 1,821,626,954. The population of the U.S. is 331,584,544. The U.S. has 25,296 cases per million residents. Japan has 733 cases per million residents. South Korea has 491 cases per million residents. China has 60 cases per million residents. Thailand has 53; Taiwan 22; Vietnam 12.

The data-driven Financial Times report on the pandemic crisis on Sunday noted that "by late February new cases in China were in decline, and attention had shifted to two new areas of concern, one a regional neighbour and the other further afield. Alarms were raised in South Korea in mid-February after a single super-spreader sparked more than 1,000 cases in the city of Daegu in a matter of days. Between February 17 and 25, the country’s confirmed case count rose from 31 to 1,146-- a 37-fold increase in just eight days, with cases doubling every day and a half. Meanwhile, in Europe, all eyes were on Italy as a cluster of infections began spreading through the northern region of Lombardy. Both trajectories looked bleak, but the countries’ fortunes quickly diverged. South Korea acted quickly, taking advantage of legislation passed in response to the 2012 Mers crisis that allows for extensive surveillance of its citizens during an infectious disease outbreak. A comprehensive contact-tracing operation was put in place, partnered with a rapid expansion of testing. On March 20, South Korea was carrying out 100 tests for every positive one that came back, the same day it recorded its 100th death. It took Italy three more months and 34,000 deaths to reach the same testing levels."

The US entered the crisis already particularly vulnerable among western nations due to many residents being without health insurance and a lack of paid sick leave in many areas. Moreover, in Donald Trump, it had a president who consistently downplayed the severity of the disease that he would eventually contract.

In the absence of a co-ordinated federal response, state and local governments introduced their own measures to contain the virus. Loosening of restrictions has been similarly fragmented, and in some cases started before evidence suggested local outbreaks were under control.

The complex patchwork of often contradictory state-level measures can be visualised using an index developed by political scientists at Oxford university’s Blavatnik School of Government to summarise the overall stringency of responses to the pandemic.

When the virus claimed thousands of victims in the spring, the centre of the crisis was New York City, its suburbs and similar cities in the north-east; vast swaths of the country were largely unaffected. As the year wore on, startlingly different geographical patterns emerged. Once confined to the most densely populated cities, the virus seeped out into small-town and rural America, with places such as Hancock county, Georgia, (population: 8,457) registering among the highest death rates in the country. By early October, the overall death rate was highest in counties classified as the small towns and rural areas-- and lowest in large urban counties.

Another invaluable data provider is CovidExitStrategy.org and this map the published yesterday shows each state's progress towards a new normal. Two states are in decent shape: Maine and Vermont. California, Oregon, New York and New Hampshire don't look good but the the rest of the country looks terrible and most of it is in an "uncontrolled spread." If you want all the numbers, study the website. This map gives you can idea of the horror-show we're facing thanks to Trump's version of "leadership."

Trump's version of leadership has always been highlighted by infighting and chaos. It's how lesser men control situations in business and politics. It doesn't work for anyone but the leader. It's a disaster in a national challenge-- like the pandemic. Philip Rucker took it on yesterday with a Washington Post deep dive focusing on the catastrophic response to the pandemic: Trump’s den of dissent: Inside the White House task force as coronavirus surges. "Atlas shot down attempts to expand testing," he began. "He openly feuded with other doctors on the coronavirus task force and succeeded in largely sidelining them. He advanced fringe theories, such as that social distancing and mask-wearing were meaningless and would not have changed the course of the virus in several hard-hit areas. And he advocated allowing infections to spread naturally among most of the population while protecting the most vulnerable and those in nursing homes until the United States reaches herd immunity, which experts say would cause excess deaths, according to three current and former senior administration officials. Atlas also cultivated Trump’s affection with his public assertions that the pandemic is nearly over, despite death and infection counts showing otherwise, and his willingness to tell the public that a vaccine could be developed before the Nov. 3 election, despite clear indications of a slower timetable. Atlas’s ascendancy was apparent during a recent Oval Office meeting. After Trump left the room, Atlas startled other aides by walking behind the Resolute Desk and occupying the president’s personal space to keep the meeting going, according to one senior administration official."

Discord on the coronavirus task force has worsened since the arrival in late summer of Atlas, whom colleagues said they regard as ill-informed, manipulative and at times dishonest. As the White House coronavirus response coordinator, Deborah Birx is tasked with collecting and analyzing infection data and compiling charts detailing upticks and other trends. But Atlas routinely has challenged Birx’s analysis and those of other doctors, including Anthony S. Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, with what the other doctors considered junk science, according to three senior administration officials.

Birx recently confronted Vice President Pence, who chairs the task force, about the acrimony, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Birx, whose profile and influence has eroded considerably since Atlas’s arrival, told Pence’s office that she does not trust Atlas, does not believe he is giving Trump sound advice and wants him removed from the task force, the two people said.

Pence did not take sides, but rather told Atlas and Birx to bring data bolstering their perspectives to the task force and to work out their disagreements themselves, according to two senior administration officials.

The result has been a U.S. response increasingly plagued by distrust, infighting and lethargy, just as experts predict coronavirus cases could surge this winter and deaths could reach 400,000 by year’s end.

...On Saturday, Atlas wrote on Twitter that masks do not work, prompting the social media site to remove the tweet for violating its safety rules for spreading misinformation. Several medical and public health experts flagged the tweet as dangerous misinformation coming from a primary adviser to the president.

“Masks work? NO,” Atlas wrote in the tweet, followed by other misrepresentations about the science behind masks. He linked to an article from the American Institute for Economic Research-- a libertarian think tank behind the Barrington effort-- that argued against masks and dismissed the threat of the virus as overblown.

Trump and many of his advisers have come to believe that the key to a revived economy and a return to normality is a vaccine.

“They’ve given up on everything else,” said a senior administration official involved in the pandemic response. “It’s too hard of a slog.”

Infectious-disease and other public health experts said the friction inside the White House has impaired the government’s response.

“It seems to me this is policy-based evidence-making rather than evidence-based policymaking,” said Marc Lipsitch, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “In other words, if your goal is to do nothing, then you create a situation in which it looks okay to do nothing [and] you find some experts to make it complicated.”

These days, the task force is dormant relative to its robust activity earlier in the pandemic. Fauci, Birx, Surgeon General Jerome Adams and other members have confided in others that they are dispirited.

Birx and Fauci have advocated dramatically increasing the nation’s testing capacity, especially as experts anticipate a devastating increase in cases this winter. They have urged the government to use unspent money Congress allocated for testing-- which amounts to $9 billion, according to a Democratic Senate appropriations aide-- so that anyone who needs to can get a test with results returned quickly.

Opposition Research by Nancy Ohanian

But Atlas, who is opposed to surveillance testing, has repeatedly quashed these proposals. He has argued that young and healthy people do not need to get tested and that testing resources should be allocated to nursing homes and other vulnerable places, such as prisons and meatpacking plants.

...The president gave voice to this mind-set during an NBC News town hall Thursday night, when he declined to answer whether he supported herd immunity. “The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself,” Trump told host Savannah Guthrie.

But medical experts disagreed, saying it is dangerous for government leaders to advocate herd immunity or oppose interventions.

“We’d be foolish to reenter a situation where we know what to do and we’re not doing it,” said Rochelle Walensky, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “This thing can take off. All you need to do is look at what’s happened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over the last two weeks to see that this thing is way faster than we’re giving it credit for.”

...Trump’s notion of a vaccine as a cure-all for the pandemic is similarly miraculous, according to medical experts.

“The vaccines, although they’re wonderful, are not going to make the virus magically disappear,” said Tom Frieden, a former CDC director who is president of Resolve to Save Lives. “There’s no fairy-tale ending to this pandemic. We’re going to be dealing with it at least through 2021, and it’s likely to have implications for how we do everything from work to school, even with vaccines.”

Frieden added: “Remember, we have vaccines against the flu, and we still have flu.”

Still, Trump has ratcheted up his push for vaccines over the past several months, intensifying the pressure on government scientists, federal regulators and pharmaceutical executives. He has had one end date in mind: Nov. 3, which is Election Day.

Trump has envisioned a greenlit vaccine as the kind of breakthrough that could persuade voters to see his management of the pandemic as successful and thus upend a race in which virtually all public polls show him trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

...The relationships between FDA officials and White House staffers have grown more acrimonious since September, when details of stricter FDA vaccine guidance were reported by The Post. Trump and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows-- who has involved himself in the work of health agencies to a degree other officials consider inappropriate-- have repeatedly challenged Hahn over his agency’s proposals and rules, much to the FDA commissioner’s frustration.

Trump is asserting control over the messaging campaign around a vaccine. His politically minded aides in the White House have taken over the government’s communications effort, as opposed to health or scientific communicators at the relevant agencies.

For example, White House aides have sought to persuade Moncef Slaoui, head of “Operation Warp Speed,” the government’s initiative to mass-distribute an eventual vaccine, to speak more positively about the vaccine, and sometimes he has pushed back on their talking points, two officials said.

Trump routinely has told his political advisers that a vaccine would be ready by the time he stands for reelection. And he has plotted with his team on a pre-election promotional campaign to try to convince voters a vaccine is safe, approved and ready for mass distribution-- even if none of that is true yet.

These are some of the ingredients of a public health disaster, experts say.

“The one thing you can’t do-- and it’s what everybody fears, it’s what the pharmaceutical companies fear, it’s what everybody on the inside fears-- is that the government would, because of political purposes or because other countries put a vaccine out before us, truncate the normal process you’d accept for a safe and effective vaccine,” said Paul A. Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory council.

Trump’s view of the FDA has darkened considerably in recent weeks. The president now believes-- despite the absence of any such evidence-- that officials there are working against him to slow-walk vaccine approval as “some sort of ‘deep state’ push to keep him from winning reelection,” according to an administration official. Trump has said as much himself.

“New FDA Rules make it more difficult for them to speed up vaccines for approval before Election Day. Just another political hit job! @SteveFDA,” the president wrote in an Oct. 6 tweet, tagging Hahn’s Twitter handle.

Trump’s conspiratorial view of the FDA is shaped in part by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and others in the president’s orbit, both inside and outside the government. Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, said the atmosphere of pressure and recrimination, nurtured by the president, is “very concerning.”

“These are people who have dedicated their lives to working in public health and medicine and research,” he said. “To think that in the biggest public health event of their lives they would sleep an extra hour or slow-walk this for any reason is absurd.”

He added, “It’s like how an ambulance drives faster than a regular car because it’s an emergency, but even an ambulance driver is not foolhardy. They don’t want to drive over the bridge.”

'A lot of political pressure'

The distrust in Washington has trickled down to the states, where friction has increased between several governors and the administration over the vaccine process.

Some governors and officials close to them privately have expressed alarm about Trump and his aides laying the groundwork for a rushed vaccine announcement. The president has delegated much of the state outreach to Pence, who in regular calls with governors has come across as a smooth salesman for Trump’s speedy approach. The vice president has encouraged governors to help build confidence for eventual vaccines among their constituents.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), whose state is the site for vaccine trials, said in an interview, “I certainly fear there is a lot of political pressure being applied.” He said his state is preparing for a vaccine rollout, but would carefully evaluate the integrity of any announcement emanating from the White House.

“Nobody has told me that it’ll be ready by November 2nd or anytime before the election,” Pritzker said. “But [Trump] will no doubt claim such a thing because of the cocktail of drugs that he seems to be on now. He’s liable to say anything that isn’t true.”

The concerns are not limited to Democrats. One Republican state official who works with the Trump administration and spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve that relationship, said, “It’s what I would call soft power. Pence comes on these calls and sounds normal and upbeat, and basically says, ‘Stand with us.’”

The official added, “We all want a vaccine, right? We obviously want it. We’ll take it. But we don’t really know if they’ll do this right.”

The politicization of the process has damaged public credibility in an eventual vaccine. A Gallup poll released this month found that 50 percent of Americans said they would be willing to take a coronavirus vaccine approved by the FDA “right now at no cost.” That is a sharp decline from 61 percent in August and 66 percent in July.

During a virtual task force meeting led by Pence on Sept. 21, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said, “There is a substantial concern,” according to an audio recording of the meeting. “A significant part of that problem is the president’s continued anti-science statements that are contradictory to his medical advisers in so many different ways.”

Inslee asked Pence directly, “Have you discussed with the president how he’s been eroding public confidence in our efforts, including the vaccine approval? Have you discussed that with him? Have you urged him to stop this behavior?”

Pence did not directly answer the question. Rather, he replied, “We think you and all the governors on this call have a great responsibility to make sure the public knows while we’re moving rapidly and while there may be differences in opinion about various events, we just don’t want any undermining of confidence in the vaccine.”

The vice president added, “I can assure you the president will continue to speak clearly about that process.”

Inslee later said in an interview that Pence was anything but assuring.

“There is a pressure campaign,” Inslee said. “We need to follow science and not this distortion campaign... The people are on to [Trump]. They know he is trying to turn this into an electoral issue.”

...Trump has used Atlas to back up his own rejection of medical expertise. At Thursday’s NBC News town hall, a Florida voter asked the president whether after contracting covid-19 he now believed in the importance of mask-wearing.

“I’ve heard many different stories on masks,” he said.

When Guthrie challenged him by noting that all of his health officials were united in advocating masks, Trump countered by invoking Atlas.

“Scott Adkins,” Trump said, mispronouncing the doctor’s name. “If you look at Scott, Dr. Scott, he’s from-- great guy-- from Stanford, he will tell you.”

“He’s not an infectious-disease expert,” Guthrie said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Trump replied. “Look, he’s an expert. He’s one of the experts of the world.”

Back to Gov. Pritzker for a moment. Illinois is in a catastrophic situation right now-- full-fledged pandemic crisis back after a long summer lull. Sunday, Illinois reported the most new cases of any state-- 4,245, bringing the statewide total to 347,635-- 27,434 cases per million residents. What made everything turn south again? Pritzker blames Trump and his allies. He was on CNN's State of the Union Sunday and told Jake Tapper that "People are not following the mitigations, because the modeling is so bad at the leadership level, the federal level. We are trying to get the word out and you're trying to continue to convince people to do the right thing but it is the president's allies in our state, all across the state, who are simply saying to people don't pay any attention to the mitigations, don't follow the rules."

Pritzker told the viewers that Trump is "modeling bad behavior. He doesn’t wear a mask in public. He has rallies where they don’t encourage people to wear masks in public. Truly, this is now rhetoric that people understand, particularly in rural areas in my state, 'Well, the president doesn’t wear a mask; we don’t need to wear a mask. It’s not that dangerous.' The truth of the matter is that it is very dangerous."

America's Looming COVID-Civil War

Opening up

Illinois' entire northern border-- 6 counties-- is right up against Wisconsin, whose own governor, Tony Evers, described it as the "wild west" and chaotic in regard to confronting the pandemic. He said it is a "freighting place to be." Evers has been trying to have his state follow the White House guidelines but the Republican-controlled legislature and Supreme Court-- and a vocal extremist fringe of confirmed idiots-- are determined to kill as many cheeseheads as possible. Wisconsin's caseload has been spiking dangerously. On Sunday the state's steadily increasing confirmed caseload was 2,154 per million. Today it is 2,179 per million.

Illinois is in much worse shape-- 7,614 cases per million, but, unlike the Wild West to the north, Illinois is serious about confronting the pandemic and beating it back. Unfortunately for Lake, McHenry, Boone, Winnebago, Stephenson and Jo Daviess counties, their proximity to Wisconsin makes that pretty much impossible. They face 6 Wisconsin counties along that state's southern tier: Kenosha, Walworth, Rock, Green, Lafayette and Grant.

These are the northern Illinois suburban and rural counties that border on Wisconsin with the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19:

• Lake- 6,489
• McHenry- 1,179
• Boone- 290
• Winnebago- 1,490
• Stephenson- 150
• Jo Daviess- 18

On Sunday, the NY Times reported that Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker, has enacted an order that would see owners of restaurants, bars gyms, barbershops and other establishments in his state who open too early charged with a Class A misdemeanor. On Friday Pritzker filed an emergency rule "intended to prevent the spread of the coronavirus as a growing number of businesses defy stay-at-home orders across the country." A Class A misdemeanor carries a punishment of up to a year in jail and up to a $2,500 fine.

Conservative legislators are barking already. As The Times reported, state Senator Dan McConchie (R) tweeted that the governor's new rule to protect the citizens of the state "an affront to the separation of powers. Legislatures make laws. Governors enforce them. Period."

In Texas this month, a salon owner in Dallas was jailed for defying state and county orders for nonessential establishments to remain closed. The state Supreme Court ordered her release two days later. And last Sunday in Colorado, a restaurant that reopened for sit-down dining on Mother’s Day was shut down and had its license suspended.

The pain of the coronavirus shutdown, in terms of wrecked economies and shattered lives, has been unmistakable. Now, governors across the country are contemplating the risks of reopening, particularly if it produces a surge of new cases and deaths.

“This is really the most crucial time, and the most dangerous time,” Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, said on the CNN program State of the Union on Sunday. “All of this is a work in progress. We thought it was a huge risk not to open. But we also know it’s a huge risk in opening.”

...[G]overnors also acknowledged concerns about a fresh resurgence of the coronavirus, and they are haunted by images of restaurants and stores packed with patrons with uncovered faces.

“This is a virus we’re still learning a lot about,” Mr. DeWine said.

These are cases per million in the states mentioned in this post:

• Illinois- 7,614 per million
• Colorado- 3,855 per million
• Ohio- 2,437 per million
• Wisconsin- 2,179 per million
• Texas- 1,713 per million
• Idaho- 1,374 per million

McGeachin is certifiably insane and needs psychiatric treatment... badly

Idaho's numbers look relatively decent, but maybe not for long. The state's governor, Brad Little (R), hasn't done a bad job. Too bad he's burdened with a sociopath as his Lt. Governor, Janice McGeachin, who has now gone rogue. Cynthia Sewell reported last week that while Little was following the science and issuing statewide orders to curb the spread of the pandemic in Idaho, McGeachin, a bona fide crackpot extremist (note the belt-buckle-- has defied Little and his administration throughout the pandemic.

She left the Legislature’s 2020 session early-- the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate-- to attend to her family business, a restaurant and pub in Idaho Falls. She has attended or supported rallies opposing Little’s stay-home order and has been urging him to let businesses re-open. She defied his state order earlier this month to attend an event at a North Idaho brewery that re-opened despite Little’s order. 
This week she wrote a guest opinion challenging Little’s decisions.

Her opening salvo served to remind Little how powerful she is: “As lieutenant governor, I am one heartbeat away from the governor’s chair,” McGeachin wrote.

“I lose sleep at night because the heavy hand of our government is hurting so many Idahoans,” she continued. “The effects of the executive branch’s unilateral decisions will impact us for years.”

The governor campaigned on a promise of imposing the “lightest hand of government” on Idahoans, she wrote.

“To me, this means getting out of the way and letting Idahoans get back to work,” McGeachin concluded in her tome sent to media organizations around the state.

She and the governor haven't spoken in at least 3 weeks.





Endorsing Bernie Sanders And Encouraging The Progressive Wing To Unite Behind Sanders... With An Aside On Trade And Climate

-by Rachel Ventura

I am sure that it was a gut punch for Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to get the call from the corner office of the DNC encouraging them to drop out before Super Tuesday. I am sure that both still think that they are the strongest candidate for the general election, but they sucked it up and did it anyway. We still don’t know what these candidates were offered in exchange for their Biden endorsement, but I am sure that whatever was offered made the painful decision easier to make.

Right now, the people who worked tirelessly for Elizabeth Warren are also feeling that sting. I can identify with the women who still want a woman president and in my lifetime I will work to make that happen. Last night I participated in a Medicare for All townhall meeting and there were several women there who expressed their grief, and I encouraged them to move quickly and unite behind the only progressive in the race, Bernie Sanders.

Former 2016 Sanders Delegate and 2020 Warren delegate, state Representative Will Guzzardi didn’t hesitate to shift back to Bernie Sanders following Warren's withdrawal from the race.

I went on the Ben Joravsky show today as well on Chicago’s Progressive Talk Radio, WCPT 820am, to encourage supporters who wanted Warren to come out to Illinois’ 11th congressional district and canvass for Rachel Ventura and Bernie Sanders. If we want Medicare for All, The Green New Deal, a $15/hour living wage, meaningful criminal justice reform, a pathway towards citizenship for undocumented people pursuing the American dream, or meaningful campaign finance reform, there is only one candidate left in the race. From now until March 17th our campaign will be knocking on doors for Rachel Ventura and Bernie Sanders. In Aurora we are helping Junaid Afeef who is running for States Attorney. In Naperville, Illinois we are helping Denika McMillen who is running for State Representative. In Bolingbrook, Illinois we are helping Dagmara Avalar and in Plainfield, Illinois Michael Crowner is the progressive choice for State Senate 49.

Working for progressive change needs to happen up and down the ballot and that is where we all need to be. We need to be united and continue to push for the change that we want to see in the world.

As someone who has battled the establishment and won, I feel confident that we will win if we are united. I also know, that as someone who has been a strong voice for the people on the Will County Board that voters genuinely appreciate being represented. When our campaign knocks on doors in the overlapping parts of the 9th County Board District it is always nice to hear positive feedback from voters who have followed my fights for clean water, fair taxes, affordable housing, higher wages and a sustainable future. I know that people also appreciate Bernie Sanders 40 years of consistency and tireless advocacy for the marginalized and people who our political system has forgotten.

This is where I am most concerned with a potential Biden nomination. The Democratic establishment supported a corporate Democrat through the 2016 nomination process and they lost to Donald Trump. We cannot afford to make that mistake in 2020. We cannot afford 4 more years of Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate left standing who is speaking directly to poor people, people of color, women, and those who are not equally represented in our political system. We need a candidate who gives those people a reason to go to the polls in November, not the status quo. They deserve a candidate who will make it easier for everyday Americans to run for office through implementing policies like publicly financed campaigns and an end to citizen’s united.

From day one my campaign has been powered by supporters of both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. I am asking those who supported Warren to join me in supporting Bernie Sanders.

We will all be watching Michigan, a battleground state where Bernie Sanders came from behind and won in 2016. The driving issue in 2016 was trade and once again, it will be an issue that separates the corporate Democrat, Joe Biden and the progressive Democrat, Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump will be touting his “fulfilled” campaign promise of bringing jobs back with his United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, also referred to as NAFTA 2.0 trade renegotiation bill). While there were some small provisional gains in that trade deal, it was not good enough and we will continue to lose jobs because of the lack of environmental standards. I would have voted “no” on it unlike my opponent. Bernie Sanders did vote “no.” In sharp contrast, Joe Biden has supported free trade agreements like NAFTA and the China Free Trade Agreement. He supported Barack Obama’s TPP that caused Hillary Clinton to lose in the Midwest where manufacturing jobs have been decimated by these trade agreements.

At the end of the day the election in these states is going to be very similar to the 2016 cycle. In a hypothetical match-up between Trump and Biden, Donald Trump will be touting his version of NAFTA and pummeling Joe Biden for supporting the initial, flawed Clinton version. Courting white blue-collar voters in Michigan and other battle ground votes will require having a strong record of fair trade, and only Bernie Sanders brings that to the ticket.

We need to pay close attention to where Joe Biden won on Super Tuesday. He won in the south, a place where no Democrat is expected to win in 2020. We can’t have another election where the Democrat wins the popular vote and we still end up losing to Trump. We need someone like Sanders who can win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana. These are places where white middle-class voters are likely to stick with Trump if we can’t give them a better choice. Additionally, Sanders voted against Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 creating greater contrast between him and Trump. He can point to some of the shortfalls to Trump’s version of the trade agreement. For those who are not following trade closely, here are a few things that I wrote about Trump’s NAFTA in December when the bill passed the House and Senate.

Donald Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 had support from republicans and corporate democrats like my opponent. I would have voted against Trump's NAFTA deal because it will only exacerbate the climate crisis. I would have stood with these environmental groups: 350.org, Earthjustice, Food and Water Action, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Oil Change International, Sierra Club, and Sunrise Movement.

It perpetuates the offshoring of toxic waste and the outsourcing of jobs, creates incentives for more pipelines like the Keystone XL pipeline, and allows big oil companies to challenge environmental protections through a corporate tribunal process known as ISDS.

This trade deal does little to address the climate crisis and fails to even mention the words, “climate change." At least 10 national environmental groups are opposing Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 because the legislation is worse than the original NAFTA with respect to our climate.

The environmental concerns of NAFTA 2.0 are very real. This deal allows corporate polluters to dodge climate and environmental policies in the United States by outsourcing tightly regulated businesses like battery recycling.

The highly controversial Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process that allows corporations to sue a sovereign government over lost profits due to increased environmental standards remains intact for fossil fuel companies. Unfortunately, this means that oil companies like Shell or Exxon Mobile can sue Mexico in private tribunals if new environmental policies undercut their government contracts for offshore drilling, fracking, oil and gas pipelines, refineries, or other polluting activities.

The Trump administration’s text included a new “rule of origin” that would make it cheaper for oil corporations to export climate-polluting tar sands oil to the U.S. through dangerous oil pipelines like Keystone XL. The text also failed to include a provision that is needed to preserve the U.S.’s autonomy to determine if gas exports to Mexico and Canada are in the public interest. This provision is necessary to fix NAFTA’s automatic gas export guarantee, which has contributed to a five-fold surge in gas exports to Mexico since 2010, fueling increased fracking in the U.S. and an expansion of controversial cross-border gas pipelines.

As the next representative from Illinois’ 11th district I will make sure that we address the climate crisis in every trade deal. In addition to stricter environmental standards, I will also support the inclusion and expansion of human rights, women’s rights and strong, enforceable worker’s rights standards. NAFTA 2.0 makes small strides forward with labor standards. However, while these baby steps need to be recognized, I still have serious questions about how labor standards will be enforced on factory floors. Regardless, NAFTA 2.0 remains damaging to the environment despite these modest gains.

The deep irony here is that in the past, my opponent has used fossil fuel industry talking points and defined climate change as a “global problem," rather than addressing the problems right here at home in the U.S. Specifically, he has singled out other carbon-polluting nations like India and China as a way of dismissing the need for serious climate action by the United States Congress. The best way for the U.S. to influence the climate policies of other nations is through trade agreements like USMCA. Bill Foster cannot talk out of both sides of his mouth by criticizing other nations and then voting for a trade agreement that makes the climate crisis worse.

This trade agreement is far from being a “template” for future trade agreements. It represents a starting place and there is still much work to be done.

If we elect Bernie Sanders for President, in the U.S. House of Representatives I will be fighting hard to change all of our trade agreements to put the environment and human rights first. I am encouraging all of my current and past supporters to vote for fundamental change on March 17th in the Illinois Democratic Primary.

Crooked Chicago Pol Endorses Bloomberg

If this was still the 1960's-- when Bobby Rush was a co-founder of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers-- you might scratch your head and wonder how he could have endorsed a multi-billionaire former Republican mayor of New York who instituted a stop and frisk policy aimed directly at African-Americans. But over five decades have gone by and selling his endorsement to the highest bidder is exactly what anyone who's been paying attention would expect from uber-corrupt Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush today.

Lynn Sweet covered the endorsement announcement for the Chicago Sun Times this week and noted that Bloomberg, whose only endorsements have been bought-and-paid for, named Rush a national campaign co-chairman. "Rush," she wrote, told her that he was "impressed by Bloomberg’s approach to the 'economic discrimination in the black community' [and that] he will serve as a surrogate for Bloomberg and have 'influence into strategies.'" Rush is the fourth House member to endorse Bloomberg. The others are ex-Republican Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA), Blue Dog chieftain Stephanie Murphy (FL) and Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY), exactly the kind of corruption-oriented, right-of-center money-grubbers you would expect to gravitate to Bloomberg.

Blue America has endorsed Robert Emmons, Jr., the progressive young reformer who is taking on Rush this cycle. We asked him how he sees the endorsement. "Congressman Rush, like many Democrats at the time," he reminded us, "voted in favor of the 1994 Crime Bill. Also like many Democrats who voted for the bill, he later apologized for doing so. But nothing about his apology rings true after endorsing a Chicago mayoral candidate who wanted to use drones to monitor black and brown communities around Chicago, and now the presidential candidate responsible for implementing stop and frisk, Michael Bloomberg."

Emmons continued: "For months we have called attention to Rush’s corporate loyalty, and his endorsement to Mike Bloomberg follows a clear pattern. If Congressman Rush were to support a candidate because he truly believed that individual would work to empower our community, I would have no issue with it. But he has a history of moving where the money moves, and this is business as usual. There is nothing that myself and my team are more committed to than actual reform in our community, and we’ll keep fighting for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and Restorative Justice. We’ll continue to support Bernie Sanders, a presidential candidate who supports true progressive reform through an agenda with far more to offer our district than Bloomberg. #NotMeUs #WeAreTheSolution"

If you'd like to help Emmons raise money to combat the Bloomberg-Rush machine, please consider tapping on the 2020 Chicagoland thermometer above and contributing what you can to his campaign.

Is The Democratic Party More Than Just A Vehicle For Careerist Politicians? AOC Endorses Marie Newman Against Lipinski

On Monday I asked my Twitter followers if it is enough for a candidate to just be a Democrat fighting a Republican. A slight plurality said no. Only 16% said "yes, for sure," and another 25% said they would vote for the garden variety Democrat but not contribute to their campaign. Comments including statement that there is no love for conservative Democrats who vote like Republicans, very much what I hope DWT readers will agree with. Last year, just before the Illinois congressional primary, NY Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote that as the primary season was revving up, some Democrats were grappling with the question of what it means to be a Democrat. They began by looking at the tight primary between reactionary Blue Dog incumbent Dan Lipinski and progressive challenger Marie Newman, "When," they reported, "Representative Daniel Lipinski, a conservative-leaning Democrat and scion of Chicago’s political machine, agreed to one joint appearance last month with his liberal primary challenger, the divide in the Democratic Party was evident in the audience that showed up. Mr. Lipinski’s outnumbered supporters were the diminished lunch-pail Democrats that once dominated his Southside district. Those of his rival, Marie Newman, came from the party’s ascendant coalition-- young progressives and women like Elizabeth Layden, a Patagonia-clad teacher who explained her opposition to Mr. Lipinski in blunt terms.

“Because he’s a dinosaur, ’cause he’s a phony, ’cause he’s a Republican who claims to be a Democrat,” said Ms. Layden, 49, who has been making phone calls and knocking on doors to help unseat Mr. Lipinski, a seven-term House member, in the primary race this month. “Hello, women’s rights, and hello, my reproductive rights. Get out of my uterus.”

...[T]he backlash to President Trump’s divisive politics has also fueled a demand by the party’s progressive wing for ideological purity and more diverse representation, a tension that could reshape what it means to be a Democrat.

“This is part of the reason Donald Trump won,” Mr. Lipinski said in an interview, adding, “Democrats have chased people out of the party.”

Martin and Burns walked write into that with their establishment mindset that refers to "ideological purity" when talking about a Blue Dog who is vehemently anti-Choice-- not a little anti-Choice, but all the way, crazy insane, viciously, violently anti-Choice-- anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-healthcare. Dumping Lipinski isn't about ideological purity; it's about defeating a right-wing ideologue who consistently opposes core Democratic Party beliefs and values. Lipinski is very much the enemy, even if he still has a "D" next to his name. (On the ProgressivePunch website, he has an "F" next to his name.)

Lipinski was bequeathed his heavily Polish and Irish district in Chicago around Midway Airport and the South Side by his father, William Lipinski, a former ward boss and representative. The two Lipinskis have held the so-called Bungalow Belt seat for 35 unbroken years.

...Yet there are still elements of the fish-fry-Friday voters, the Catholic demographic that political veterans here still call “white ethnics.”

Wearing a Notre Dame hat and standing apart from the attendees at the candidate forum was Jack Nevin, an Illinois Department of Transportation employee who as a child attended the same parish as the Lipinski family and now lives in suburban Lemont.

“I’m a pro-life guy, born and raised Catholic,” said Mr. Nevin, by way of explaining why he was backing the incumbent. “Win or lose, he’s standing up for his beliefs.”

Ms. Newman used the forum to lash Mr. Lipinski for being out of step with the district, a drumbeat that prompted him to claim she was fomenting “a tea party of the left” that was pushing liberal “fantasies.”

But it is Mr. Lipinski who is testing just how much today’s voters in the Democratic primary contest are willing to accept in a safe seat. In addition to his deviation from orthodoxy on abortion and gay rights, he also opposed the Affordable Care Act and until recently did not support a $15 minimum wage or offering legal status to children brought to the country illegally.

“I am running with the district. I’m not voting against the district,” Ms. Newman said.

Her energetic campaign has drawn the support of a host of Washington-based progressive groups, some of which are funding attack ads and mailers against Mr. Lipinski. And she has lured Representatives Luis V. Gutiérrez and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois to oppose their colleague, a rebuke that has angered some moderate Democrats.

Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon, who leads the political arm of the centrist Blue Dog caucus, has complained to the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee about the intervention of Ms. Schakowsky and said he would seek a rule change so that members like her who have formal positions on the committee cannot oppose incumbents. “That’s just wrong, and we’re going to change that,” he said.

The Oregon scumbag, Schrader, who now has a strong primary opponent of his own in Milwaukie mayor Mark Gamba, started the move to protect endangered right-wing incumbents that turned into the Cheri Bustos rule that has torn the DCCC apart. Bustos, another reprehensible Blue Dog at the time-- she's switched to being a just as putrid New Dei now-- decreed after taking over the DCCC that any consultant or vendor who works for a challenger to any Democratic incumbent would be blacklisted by the DCCC. (Her entire team has since been fired for racism and homophobia and the DCCC barely exists any longer other than as a contribution vacuum and as Bustos' private political machine. When dozens of caucus members demanded she be fired, she only escaped with her job by agreeing to seek psychiatric help to deal with her own racism, which the DCCC called "insensitivity."

"But," continued Martin and Burns, "the Washington contretemps are just a stand-in for a much weightier debate about the future of the party. Mr. Lipinski, who makes no apology for opposing the health law, has embraced donations from anti-abortion Republicans helping fund a super PAC in his favor and says it is Ms. Newman’s ardent support for abortion rights that is 'extreme' for the district. Ms. Newman is careful to focus on economic issues and inveigh against 'the Lipinski dynasty.' But what animates her campaign are matters of identity that are galvanizing Democrats in the Trump era well beyond Chicago... 'We need to have more diversity across people of color, gender and types of folks,' Ms. Newman said. 'We can’t have all millionaires, billionaires, businesspeople and doctors in Congress.'"

Yesterday, a year on, The Times didn't have the anti-progressive, pro-establishment Martin and Burns update the story but turned to reporter Carie Edmondson instead. The headline was very different too: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez To Back First 2020 Challenger To Sitting Democrat. The story ran early in the morning and before noon AOC had endorsed Marie Newman. "We live in times that demand courageous action," wrote AOC to her supporters, "and those times demand a Democratic Party that is willing to deliver the change that working Americans deserve. But to achieve those ends, we need the Congressmembers who represent deep blue districts to be pushing us towards progressive change, not advancing a Republican agenda... 14-year incumbent Dan Lipinski has enacted a corporate-funded vision of our party, one that has harmed our communities and discouraged working people from participating in politics. While sitting in a D+6 seat in a time of crisis for working families, Lipinski has opposed Medicare for All, and accepted thousands of dollars from lobbyists, large corporations, and the fossil fuel industry. That’s why I’m excited to endorse Marie Newman’s campaign for Congress, and help Chicagoland elect the progressive champion it deserves. Like me, Marie believes that health care is a human right and that families belong together. Together, we will pass a Green New Deal that repairs our infrastructure, revitalizes our workforce, and retrains our workers for a just transition to a post-carbon economy... Where Marie is a proud supporter of universal access to abortion and birth control, Dan Lipinski has a troubling record of curtailing women’s fundamental human rights, and has worked to defund hundreds of women’s medical clinics, all while raking in donations from anti-women’s rights fundraisers. Where Marie has stood with immigrant communities for years, Lipinski refused to vote for the DREAM Act until after her 2018 primary challenge. With the coming threat of climate change, we simply cannot allow for fossil-fuel-funded politicians and their corporate donors to dictate the future our children and their grandchildren will inherit-- especially in a deep blue Democratic district that Hillary Clinton won by 15 points in 2016. Marie Newman is the only candidate in the race refusing corporate PAC money, and the only one we can trust to put working people over profit. While Marie is the clear progressive choice, her race will be anything but easy. Dan Lipinski has a war chest of corporate money, given to him by wealthy donors who want to keep things just the way they are. His status as a 14-year incumbent gives him all types of advantages, like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s decision to blacklist anyone who works for Marie’s campaign... But we know that when big organizing goes up against big money, it’s the people who come out on top in the end. When we knock doors, make phone calls, and talk to our neighbors, we can elect representatives who really represent us, and we can build the world we want to live in. The future of the Democratic Party is in our hands. It starts by electing Marie Newman." She signed her letter "Pa'lante, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."

Edmondson wrote that AOC's "high-profile support amounts to a powerful seal of approval, telegraphed to her legions of ardent liberal fans, on behalf of Ms. Newman, and a reflection of the zeal of the party’s progressive left to leverage its nascent power to continue targeting sitting Democrats... 'Marie Newman is a textbook example of one of the ways that we could be better as a party-- to come from a deep blue seat and to be championing all the issues we need to be championing,' Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview. Of Mr. Lipinski, she said: 'The fact that a deep blue seat is advocating for many parts of the Republican agenda is extremely problematic. We’re not talking about a swing state that is being forced to take tough votes.' [Lipinski] has repeatedly expressed his concerns that it is 'detrimental' for the party to push out conservative lawmakers."

“This campaign is about putting someone in place that is in alignment directly with the district on issues like affordability for the middle class and working families, the Green New Deal,” Ms. Newman said in an interview on Monday, adding that she and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez “share some very similar values.”

But the move also reflects a careful political calculus by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx Democrat. She came to Congress vowing to take down any Democrat she considered insufficiently progressive, but has, until now, refrained from taking on any of her fellow incumbents directly. In challenging Mr. Lipinski, she is targeting an incumbent Democrat, but one who has broken sharply with party orthodoxy, and has already lost the support of some of his other Democratic colleagues.

The House Democrats’ campaign arm in April formally broke committee business ties with political consultants and pollsters who sign on to work for primary challengers, infuriating progressive Democrats. The blacklist, Ms. Newman said, “was a very expensive issue for a while on my campaign.”

Progressive groups and lawmakers, however, have still flocked to support Ms. Newman. Representative Ro Khanna of California, and two Illinois lawmakers, Representative Jan Schakowsky and then-Representative Luis V. Gutiérrez, broke with party leadership in 2018 to endorse Ms. Newman, and Mr. Khanna renewed his endorsement this year. Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois, the chairwoman of House Democrats’ campaign arm, canceled a fund-raiser in support of Mr. Lipinski in May after facing a backlash from the left.

Ms. Newman has also won the support of two candidates in the Democratic presidential primary, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Ms. Warren last week announced twin endorsements of Justice Democrats candidates, backing both Ms. Newman and Jessica Cisneros, who is challenging Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas.

Ms. Cisneros, who was recruited to run against Mr. Cuellar by Justice Democrats and is described by some as the next Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, has yet to win the endorsement of any sitting House Democrat.

“We are so proud that Marie Newman is the first Justice Democrat of this cycle to receive an endorsement from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” said Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of Justice Democrats. “The momentum is growing in our movement to make the Democratic Party fight for solutions as big as the problems we face and create a party that fights for its voters, not corporate donors.”

Until this week, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had largely focused on helping incumbent freshmen lawmakers, like Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado, a well-liked freshman and member of Democratic leadership whom she will support at a fund-raiser in Boulder this week. In April, she rallied around some of her colleagues who flipped districts President Trump won in 2016, encouraging her Twitter followers to donate to their campaigns.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that she would continue to assess whether she would weigh in on other primary challenges, but that she had no interest in intervening in competitive races that could tip the balance of power in the House.

“If we’re going to make these changes, they need to come from safe blue seats,” she said.

As of today, Blue America has endorsed 10 progressive candidates taking on reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems. You can contribute to any or all of their campaigns by clicking on the thermometer above, the same thermometer that helped raise campaign contributions for AOC and Rashida Tlaib in 2018. So far this cycle, there are the candidates we're trying to help-- and their opponents:

• AZ-01- Eva Putzova v Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog)
• CA-16- Kim Williams v Jim Costa (Blue Dog)
• GA-13- Michael Owens v David Scott (Blue Dog)
• IL-03- Marie Newman v Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog)
• IL-11- Rachel Ventura v Bill Foster (New Dem)
• MA-08- Brianna Wu v Stephen Lynch (New Dem)
• NY-05- Shaniyat Chowdhury v Gregory Meeks (New Dem)
• NY-16- Jamaal Bowman v Eliot Engel (New Dem)
• OR-05- Mark Gamba v Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog)
• TX-28- Jessica Cisneros v Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog)

Blue America's Newest Endorsed Candidate, Rachel Ventura (IL-11)

Rachel Ventura is the progressive Democrat challenging New Dem, Bill Foster in Illinois’ 11th congressional district. Ventura currently serves on the Will County Board, representing swing district #9. To win her 2018 campaign, she challenged the local Democratic establishment, was outspent 3:1 and still dominated the 5-candidate primary field by running a well-organized grassroots campaign. In the general election, the all-volunteer campaign knocked on over 10,000 doors and beat the Democratic candidate by 11% and the Republican by 8% of the vote with a strong GOTV effort.

At times during her first year on the board she became a controversial voice-- challenging Democratic leadership, but she also has had some early successes that are defining of the kinds of things she will fight for on the floor of the House of Representatives.

When the aquifer that provided water to the Village of Fairmont began drying up, village officials wanted to privatize Fairmont’s water system to a company named Aqua. Ventura stepped in and worked with regional governing bodies to move the Fairmont residents over to the Joliet public water system. Residents of Fairmont, a largely African American community, saved significant amounts of money on their water bills and dodged lead poisoning. Just recently, Aqua was sued by the Illinois Attorney General and the Will County State’s Attorney for failing to treat their water properly, causing elevated levels of lead in University Park’s water system.

Ventura also successfully fought for Will County to become the second county in Illinois to adopt the Greenest Region Compact, a framework to move Will County towards a green future. Recently, she led the battle to move all of the county buildings over to 100% renewable energy, a measure that would have created jobs and set an example for other municipalities to follow.

But if she is being successful at the county level, why jump to Congress so quickly?

This spring, Rachel realized that her ability to work towards meaningful change would have to have to come at the federal level. It began with a meeting with Rep. Bill Foster to get him to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All bill being advanced by Rep. Pramila Jaypal. After sharing her experience with Foster as a single mother who had to go without health insurance for two years, she realized that Foster was not going to be moved. He promised a follow-up meeting and then the Our Revolution group was told by Foster’s congressional office that they would only be given one meeting per group, per year.

The group rallied outside of Foster’s office in early June of 2019.

Ventura shared her personal story of her fear in leaving her previous marriage with an abusive husband and losing health insurance in the process.

“If we do not have health care as a right, there are millions of people in relationships, abusive relationships, and they fear leaving,” Ventura said. “And they stay in a horrible situation because they’re too afraid. That is not a government that works for everyone.”

A similar effort in Aurora Illinois was organized by a coalition of progressive and environmental groups (Sierra Club, Progressives of Kane County, Our Revolution and DSA) who met with and rallied outside Foster’s office on June 22, 2019, seeking his support for the Green New Deal. Again, Foster refused to support the sweeping and necessary framework to tackle the climate crisis.

About a month later, on July 20th, she announced her candidacy.




Ventura is an aggressive grassroots campaigner and a little over 30-days into the campaign, she announced having attended 68 events, recruited 150 volunteers and raised money from 93 individual donors. It will take an intense door-to-door effort to reach voters in the suburban district.

Illinois 11th congressional district is one of those partisan gerrymanders that guarantees single-party rule. But this one wasn't created by the GOP; the Illinois legislature is firmly in the hands of the Democratic Party and the Democrats drew the boundaries on IL-11, creating a D+9 district in an area that Republican House speaker Denny Hastert used to call home. West of Chicago, the bulk of the voters live in Will and DuPage counties, with smaller numbers in Kane and Kendall counties. It includes Joliet (Will Co.) in the south and all of Aurora (Kane Co.) and much of Naperville (DuPage Co.) in the north. The district is 79.6% suburban and most of the people there are in blue collar, sales and service jobs. Almost half the population is white and the medium income in $68,154.

After 2 bruising election challenges by union carpenter John Laesch, Hastert was forced to resign or face certain defeat in 2008. (Laesch has remained active in union politics and is now Ventura's campaign manager.) Conservative multimillionaire, Bill Foster beat GOP multimillionaire, crackpot and frequent candidate Jim Oberweis 57 to 43%. Foster self-funded about $2 million into his race and Oberweis put close to $4 million of his own in. Pretty disgusting! The DCCC spent $1,349,399 on Foster's behalf, about the same amount the NRCC spent on Oberweis. The following cycle the voters kicked Foster out and elected Randy Hultgren (R). Then came the new gerrymander and in 2012 Foster ran against Republican Judy Biggert in the re-drawn district and beat her convincingly, after dumping another half million of his own into the race.

Obama won the district both times with healthy margins and Hillary beat Trump 58.9% to 35.4%. It's what you call a safe blue district. And not just safe, progressive. When given a chance to choose between Bernie and Hillary in the 2016 primary, IL-11 voters chose Bernie 52.3% to 47.7%. Foster joined the Wall Street-oriented New Dem caucus and earned an "F" from ProgressivePunch for his corporate-oriented voting record. After all these years in Congress his only two signature bills were naming post offices and he's probably best known for joining the Republicans and 32 other corrupt conservative Dems to gut Dodd Frank's consumer protections. He's considerably to the right of his own constituents. Foster has refused to co-sponsor Pramila Jayapal's Medicare-For-All bill, refused to co-sponsor AOC's Green New Deal resolution, refused to co-sponsor Lloyd Doggett's bill to lower the price of drugs... and he opposes impeachment:

So... the opposite of Blue America's newest endorsee, Rachel Ventura, a progressive member of the Will County Board who has challenged Foster to debate all the issues that are most pressing and most important to the people in the district, where he doesn't even seem to live, splitting his time between DC and New York City.

In framing the primary for Will County voters recently, Rachel said that she recognizes the national significance of the race as the divide spreads wider between the progressive Democrats and the New Dem Coalition and their so-called "Problem Solvers" allies, two conservative caucuses that Foster belongs to. "We are living through a tumultuous period of upheaval and crisis and I feel like our current representative is in a state of stasis," she said. "It is just too much inaction on major issues like climate change, meaningful health care reform, wealth inequality, and campaign finance reforms. We the people deserve meaningful actions to address the crisis facing our generation and the next."

If you're with us about putting forward the kind of progressive agenda that both Bernie and Elizabeth are campaigning on, it is crucial we get rid of more dead wood from Congress like Bill Foster and replace them with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Democrats from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party-- like Rachel Ventura. Foster has accomplished nothing in Congress and it's hard to understand why he even wants to stay there. He opposes the tide of history and his time is up. Please consider contributing to Rachel's grassroots campaign by clicking on the Blue America 2020 congressional primary thermometer on the right and contributing what you can. There are already too many members of Congress from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. If you want to see action on Climate Change, the Green New Deal, banning the sale of assault weapons, a fairer tax system that requires the richest Americans to pair their fair share, we all need to step up and do what we can to replace slugs like Foster with can-do progressives like Rachel Ventura.

There Are Members Of Congress Who Don't Understand The Urgency Of The Climate Crisis-- Take Cheri Bustos And "Energy Expert" Sean Casten

Bustos and Casten-- Climate Incrementalists

Corporate Dems in Illinois really are spearheading the effort to keep the fossil fuel industry alive. New Dems, Blue Dogs and Vote-For-Sale Democrats are moving quickly to normalize false "solutions" to the climate crisis and to make them acceptable to the public. Remember way back in 2018 when Sean Casten ran for Congress as "a clean energy consultant," practically basing his whole campaign against GOP incumbent Peter Roskam on combatting the Climate Crisis. It was a popular issue in the Chicagoland district west and northwest of the city (primarily DuPage County with pieces of Kane, Cook, McHenry and Lake as well) and Casten won the R+2 district 169,001 (53.6%) to 146,445 (46.4%), which appeared to be an incredible feat, only tempered by the fact that Hillary had beaten Trump there by the same 7 point margin.

Still great news for people concerned about Climate. Pelosi put him onto the brand new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis-- no one knew then it was designed to slow down work on the Climate Crisis, not solve it-- and onto the Science and Technology Committee, where he got a seat on the Energy Subcommittee. Yesterday, one of the foremost Climate activists in DePage County told me Casten abandoned the Green New Deal on his first day in Congress. "What a phony he turned out to be! A real corporate Democrat in the worst sense of the word." Casten joined the New Dems immediately and when AOC introduced the Green New Deal Resolution, Casten adamantly refused to sign on as a co-sponsor, something 94 Democrats have already done.

The only members of the Illinois delegation who have signed on are Jan Schakowsky, Chuy Garcia, Danny Davis and Mike Quigley. Meanwhile corporate Dems like Blue Dog Cheri Bustos and Casten have been working to discredit the Green New Deal approach and lull the public into believing incremental "moderate"-- and inadequate-- half-measures are all that's needed. Progressive Democrat Marie Newman noted that "When my opponent calls The Green New Deal a fairy tale and socialism, it simply demonstrates how out of touch he is with reality. We are in a crisis and we should all be acting as first responders, not obstructionists." Her opponent is notorious Blue Dog and Climate Change denier Dan Lipinski. If he sounds more like a Republican than a Democrat, it's because he is more of a Republican than a Democrat.

Last week Bustos submitted what she calls a framework of policies and principles-- "Rural Green Partnership"-- to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. "Climate change may be the most complicated challenge our country has ever faced," she wrote, "but I intend to meet the challenge head on and give rural America-- including families in Northwest and Central Illinois-- a seat at the table... [R]ural America is armed with some of the best tools to turn back the course of climate change."

Bustos and Casten want Congress to ditch the AOC all-in approach and go for "expand and improved conservation programs that are respected and well known to farmers" [while] "exploring new markets for ecosystem services that establish economic incentives to adopt conservation practices that increase resilience...and investing in rural infrastructure and leveraging zero and low interest loans, tax credits and grants to incentivize new clean energy development and innovations that drive down green house gas emissions."

None of this is bad; in fact it's part, a small part, of what's needed to save the planet. The problem with Bustos-- along with others in Congress, like Casten, backing her approach-- is that they're attempting to tamp down any sense of urgency and any recognition of the magnitude and scope of the Climate Crisis. A Climate activist in Galesburg told me that "this is about her reelection bid, not about Climate Change; this are false solutions to an existential problem... Cheri is just a typical politician who's never thinking about anything except her next election."





Brianna Wu, is running for a Boston area congressional seat held by conservative Democrat Stephen Lynch (New Dem). Yesterday she sent me the video clip above and told me that she wished "we had time to address this crisis in incrementalist ways. In fact, Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich sat on a couch in 2008 and promised just that, slow and steady decarbonization. Unfortunately, they didn’t follow through and now we are out of time for small ideas. I was on the shore of Quincy this weekend, meeting residents in my district. And as I saw their beautiful houses, all I could think about was the incalculable human cost more inaction will cause. There is no more time for their timidity."

Eva Putzova is running for a seat occupied by "ex"-Republican Tom O'Halleran, a Blue dog being protected by Cheri Bustos and what's left of her decimated DCCC. Another Climate Crisis denier, O'Halleran, like Bustos, opposes the Green New Deal. Eva supports it strongly: "Climate change is everything: it's an environmental, health, migration, security, social, and economic issue. Decades of bi-partisan inaction at the federal level left us with limited options to stabilize the climate in a very compressed timeframe. No incremental regulation can be adequate to the monumental crisis we are facing. The only way to secure our survival on this planet is to invest heavily in retooling our economy the way the Green New Deal proposes-- with equity and justice in mind. The short-term monetary interests of industries dependent on fossil fuels should not trump the very existence of life on Earth. We led the world into the crisis, we ought to lead getting us out of it."

ShitMoms by Tala Madani

Dary Rezvani is the progressive Democrat running for the Central Valley seat occupied by Darrell Issa. He and Issa don't see much of anything in common-- and especially not the urgency of the Climate Crisis. "Jay Inslee," he told me, "said it best: 'the house is on fire.' We are watching ecological diversity disappear at an alarming rate. We have seen the hottest summer ever recorded. If we are going to actually win this battle than the only way is with drastic, immediate change. The issue stems from the denial of an actual problem. Anyone who can comprehend the magnitude of this issue knows that something like the Green New Deal is nothing compared to the dystopian future we are headed towards where the next generation will be fighting wars for clean drinking water. We literally don't have time for incrementalism. Scientists have said we have 10 years until the tipping point, what time does that leave us for change here and there? We know how long it takes for our government to take action so what makes anyone think that we would be able to make the changes necessary in the amount of time we have left unless it was done in one life-altering bill? In addition to the changes that we need to make as Americans, it will still not be enough to curb the problem entirely which is why as world leaders we need to pass such drastic legislation. When other countries see that we are taking the issue seriously, they will also fall into line. All other issues will be intensified from the denial of the Climate Crisis, immigration will increase to developed areas, health issues will intensify with worse air and water quality, and more global violence will ensue as conditions worsen in developing nations. Our future depends on the Green New Deal."

Kim Williams is the progressive Democrat running for another Central Valley district, this one occupied by reactionary Blue Dog Jim Costa, an opponent of everything and anything progressive, including the Green New Deal. "There is no question that the Green New Deal has gained momentum and the people of this country are ready for comprehensive solutions to our planet's climate crisis," Williams told us. "However, we are still met with Democrats and folks across the isle who fail to address this issue with a sense of urgency and uphold the status quo. As long as this remains the case, fossil fuel companies will continue to pollute our air and water, and communities in my district will continue to live with some of the least breathable air in America. Life expectancies will continue to be cut short, and we will fail to deliver the economic security we promise our communities every election cycle. I am running to strengthen the fight for bold, comprehensive solutions to remedy the impacts of climate change my district feels everyday. I understand we must harness this momentum to create concrete legislation that moves to dramatically reduce carbon emissions and create good union jobs for our communities. This can only be done by swiftly mobilizing federal resources in response to the crisis before us."

Something tells me that the person who managed to destroy the DCCC in just a few months after taking over as chair is not the member of Congress who is going to solve the Climate Crisis with what amounts to a spiffy campaign plank. RL Miller, one of the nation's foremost Climate activists, chair of the California Democratic Party's environmental caucus and founder of ClimateHawksVote: "Cheri Bustos needs to sit down and read the new IPCC report on lands and agriculture released on August 8 and write a plan that conforms to the demands of science, not one promoting pipelines carrying carbon dioxide. Her plan is woefully inadequate."